


and you would fall and turn the white snow red

by Sharkchimedes



Series: to all those who may encounter this voyager, and receive this message [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, i have taken the timeline and i have ignored it, office antics, sometimes your new coworker just has a paranormal creature in him and that's ok!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25396078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharkchimedes/pseuds/Sharkchimedes
Summary: Jon had been expecting to have three assistants when he made the sudden move over to the Archives. But in reality, there are four. And the fourth is- well. A little strange. And his predecessor may have been murdered, but that seems to just be the way things go down here.Or: Michael Shelley and the odd case of the Spiral bodymate, becoming friends with your coworkers paranormal peers, arson, and the long road to murdering your evil boss and having a group wedding.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Michael Shelley, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sasha James & Michael Shelley
Series: to all those who may encounter this voyager, and receive this message [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943614
Comments: 133
Kudos: 176





	1. home of the strange // jon; mid 2014

**Author's Note:**

> this one goes out to my friends who went absolutely wild over this idea; thanks yall for indulging me.
> 
> anyway! a couple notes!
> 
> the basic premise of this au is "instead of the distortion & michael shelley becoming one being, its more of a Venom scenario and they just go back to the Institute to annoy Gertrude/Elias and then things go on from there". there's also a LOT of canon divergence in this au. bc i basically threw 85% of the plot out whoops. i'd describe this as "office hi-jinks and friendship with occasional paranormal murder!"
> 
> there will also be a couple ships later on that will be added to the tags list! they just also involve characters who won't be appearing for a bit yet and i always feel super weird tagging everything when it's spoilers atm/hasn't happened yet.
> 
> other important note is that different chapters will be from different POVs and may take place at different times. i will be labeling every chapter with who's POV it is and what year & rough time of year it is.
> 
> work title is from white winter hymnal by fleet foxes, and tbh is more dramatic than the overall tone of this will be.  
> chapter title is from home of the strange by young the giant! p much all of the chapter titles will be coming from songs from the fic playlist i made.

There’s a senior archival assistant, and Jon may just be _ever_ so slightly scared of him. 

Everyone who works for the Magnus Institute knows that turnover in the Archives is high, though not as high as Artifact Storage if only for the fact there are more than double the employees in that department. Storage is the sort of place that has a dozen active workers but where you only spend a few months if at all possible. But it’s still a pretty abysmal ratio, and despite the general feeling that the Archives would be the sort of place you _did_ stick to, what with being research more focused on older files...

Most archival staff seem to quit, or stop coming into work with the _assumption_ being that they’ve quit. If you listen to the gossip in the canteen, maybe a couple here or there have disappeared from their positions under “mysterious circumstances”. Or more than a couple, in recent years. The former Head Archivist certainly fit into the latter, loathe as Jon was to admit it.

Head Archivist Gertrude Robinson had disappeared two weeks ago now, and Jon had been pulled from the Research department and promoted to Head Archivist to replace her. It was honestly still confusing to him why _he’d_ be picked, but there’d been a change in pay that made it easy to let the strangeness of it fall by the wayside.

By the last couple years of her tenure, Robinson had been down to two assistants, and one left around the time the other one was rumored to have disappeared, and Jon’s never been quite sure if they came back afterwards or not, and neither are very well known in the rest of the Institute, so Jon expects that he and the team Elias has assigned to follow him over from Research will be on their own. New blood, and all that.

Which is why when he walks into the Archives to find that there is someone already _there_ , and that the desk nearest his new office door is definitely occupied already, and not by Tim or Sasha or Martin because he _knows_ they won’t be officially transferring till the end of the week so they can wrap up the projects they’re involved in, it’s startling.

It’s fairly obvious that whoever this is, they’ve _been_ here, because the desk is the sort of messy that only comes from a comfortable presence and ownership that simply moving your things from one desk to another doesn’t provide. There’s a cup of tea, half finished and on a little plate with a biscuit missing a corner, on the corner of the desk, a couple stacks of files, and some music playing softly from a phone. A satchel is laying on the ground, side propped against the desk, and there’s a few pins stuck into the strap. 

The door to document storage is propped open, and Jon can hear faint humming from inside. Whoever has been working down here must be getting something, and in a moment of panic, Jon darts for his office door. If he’s going to meet someone he wasn’t expecting, he’d rather not be holding his cardboard box of personal effects like a lost schoolboy when he meets them.

He feels enough like he’s been promoted out of his depth; he certainly doesn’t want that fact broadcasted to whoever is down here.

He makes it into his office and looks around the empty room for a moment. It’s emptier than he expected, if he’s honest, and the furniture looks uncomfortably new but somehow old and dusty at the same time, like it was brought out of the document storage room for him. The only signs of wear are dust and a few scuffs in the metal of the desk’s legs. 

The floor and the cabinets, on the other hand, are old, but uncomfortably scrubbed clean. Jon remembers the rumor that some blood spatter had been found when Gertrude went missing and swallows.

It’s short work to unpack his box, and tug at his clothes for a minute so he looks less like the wrong-footed, unsure and suddenly in-charge man that he feels like. Jon glances around his office again, and goes back out into the bullpen.

The owner of the occupied desk has come back while he was inside, tall and facing the other way to study a document they must’ve been retrieving and when he clears his throat, they turn to him.

The archival ID tag pinned haphazardly to the material of his windbreaker reads “Michael Shelley; Senior Archival Assistant” in shiny, recently printed letters, and the windbreaker itself is probably the most horrifying article of clothing Jon has seen in his entire life. It’s blocked neon patterns on white, and the neon is printed in squiggles that are so bright and contrasting that it takes Jon a second to decide they aren’t moving. 

Or maybe they _are_ moving?

The zipper that runs up the front is off-putting too, each zip hook seemingly a different size from the one it linked up with but somehow zipped nearly all the way. It’s also an eyesearing pink. Jon hadn’t known you could _get_ zippers in that color of pink. The whole jacket is so gaudy that Jon ends up staring for a minute, completely broken from his prior anxiety of meeting whoever this was.

Regardless, by the time he gets past that long enough to look up, Michael is grinning at him. It looks somewhat like a friendly smile, but with too many teeth and a slightly challenging edge. It’s framed by bright blond curls that have apparently come loose from a messily done bun. 

It hits Jon for the first time then, when he sees the clear glint of sharp curiosity, that it not only makes no sense for him to be here because he was a researcher, and not a supervisor or anything like that, but because there _is_ still someone here who worked for Gertrude, someone with _senior assistant_ written on his badge. 

What was Elias playing at that he’d move and promote Jon when Michael, who he can assume was likely Gertrude’s personal assistant, is still here? If this is the assistant who’s been here for years now (and disappeared and come back), as one can assume from office gossip, then why wasn’t _he_ promoted and only a new team of assistants assigned?

“So. You’re the new Archivist, then?” Michael cants his head slightly to the side, still looking at him with that unnerving intensity. It’s a look that Jon can’t quite place. It isn’t jealous, or even threatened; it seems closest to curiosity, like Jon is an intriguing fish swimming by a glass that someone is watching. He has the ridiculous feeling he’s been sized up for something beyond his understanding, and Jon doesn’t know what the consequence is for being found lacking. 

“Jonathan Sims, yes.” Jon nods, shifting a little so he’s standing more with his shoulders back and in less of the slouch he tends to get from hunching over his desk. “I was in Research.”

“Ah- Michael Shelley. Been in the Archives for- well.” He offers Jon a hand. It feels… heavier than it should. But that’s probably just Jon’s imagination playing with him; the stress of the day and the surprise and all that. He’s just ascribing characteristics to Michael that fit with the slight intimidation he’s feeling. “I’m guessing Elias didn’t tell you I would be here…?” 

“He very well didn’t.” Jon huffs, glancing at the ceiling in the approximate direction of Elias’ office. “I doubt he found it relevant.” 

Michael chuckles, and something about it is off, somehow. “The director likes to _think_ we’re irrelevant, down here.” He grins at Jon, and adds in a tone that implies a personal joke Jon doesn’t have the context for. “But that’s alright, makes things easier.”

Jon has the sudden feeling he may be more in over his head than he previously realized, but Michael seems nice enough, and doesn’t give the impression of being irritated with someone else being promoted over him. 

“Yes, well.” Jon tries to think of something else to say, or to ask, and comes up short.

“Looking forward to working with you, Archivist.” Michael says, before he turns back to his desk, and Jon relaxes a bit as he heads back to the safety of his office.

* * *

When he does a little digging into the personnel files available to him, including Michael’s, which Elias has emailed to him with a snide “Whoops- did I forget to mention the fourth member of your team?”, it makes even less sense. Michael has been working for the Archives for about as long as Jon's been at the Institute, and is the only one of Gertrude's staff still around. 

Michael was made Senior Assistant officially in 2010, and has been working for the Institute since the early 2000s, which given how old he seems strikes Jon a little as odd. Michael must’ve been hired directly out of whatever school he attended, and there aren’t any records of his working in other departments. Gertrude must’ve personally trained him, or fast tracked him through the library somehow. Regardless, he has far more experience down here than Jon ever will. 

So. Why is there now a Head Archivist Sims instead of a Head Archivist Shelley?

That’s the first time Jon gets the feeling that something isn’t quite right in the Archives.

* * *

The next two days are… interesting.

Jon comes in: early, because that’s his preference, and Michael is already there. Jon is well aware that his work habits stretch a little beyond the normal, as Tim is always happy to remind him, but when he gets there, Michael is always already there.

It doesn’t seem like something the man is used to, based on the yawning and the sugary snack wrappers stuffed into the bin by his desk. But he grins at Jon and gives him a wave all the same, and while Jon works on figuring out what his new daily schedule will look like, what tasks have priority, _why everything in this basement is a horrible bloody disaster_ , Michael goes between his desk and document storage.

The only sound to break the otherwise silence are the occasional faint echoes of whatever Michael is listening to. He’s brought out earbuds now that Jon is around, and he hums when he’s in document storage. Every once in a while, Jon can hear him walk down to the breakroom and fiddle about in there. 

Michael also won’t leave until Jon does, and insists on locking up. He’s fairly sure that if he _tried_ to go back, he’d find Michael sitting at his desk, even if he was half asleep doing it.

Jon’s not entirely sure what to make of that.

* * *

So that’s the Archival team: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist; Michael Shelly, Senior Assistant; Tim Stoker, Sasha James, and Martin Blackwood, all Assistants. 

Thankfully, they seem to all get along fairly easily from the start, which means that Jon doesn’t have to worry so much about putting in any effort in getting them to like each other. Any day he doesn’t have to encourage interpersonal relations is a good one. There’s enough mess to sort out without adding any office politics.

Unfortunately, the opposite ends up being true.

Jon already knew that Tim and Sasha were friends. It would’ve been hard for him to miss, since Tim had forcefully attached himself to Jon when they were both still in Research several years ago. He’s been dragging along to enough of their outings to know that they’re fairly close. 

What he hadn’t expected was that Sasha and _Michael_ are friends.

When the rest of the new Archival team makes their way down for the first time, juggling boxes of their own personal items and their work bags, Michael sees Sasha coming and makes it from his desk to her side and is taking one of her boxes before Jon can even register that he’s moving. 

"I could've made it." Sasha rolls her eyes at him, but she's smiling, and it's not an annoyed tone. She sounds _fond_. 

“Maybe, but then I wouldn’t get to tell you I saved you the desk by mine.” Michael grins at her, the same grin with too many teeth, but directed at Sasha it looks less predatory. More like an older brother who’s planning to steal something from her room later.

Sasha looks past him to the desk in question, which has been marked off by way of Michael’s gaudy windbreaker being strewn across the surface. 

It’s the third one of them he’s seen, because Michael comes in each morning in a different, equally garish windbreaker. Jon would try to be polite, even if it’s unprofessional, but the things are _truly_ eyesores. He’s fairly certain the one Michael was wearing yesterday gave him a headache.

He’s slightly scared to find out how many of the things Michael has: something tells him that’s very possible Michael spends all of his paycheck on the things.

Sasha, though, grins when she sees it and scurries over to the desk, setting down her box on her chair. She glances at Michael for a moment, and whatever she sees in his expression, she picks the windbreaker up and slides it on over her shoulders. She leaves it unzipped, and doesn’t put her arms through the sleeves either, and turns back to Michael, leaning her hip against her new desk. “I feel _very_ welcome, thank you.” 

Michael grins back at her. “Good!”

Jon is certain there’s something there, some important thread of their conversation that he’s missing somehow, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it before Tim enters the room with a shout of “Good morning, basement exiles!” and strides in to claim a desk of his own. Martin finishes the small parade of transfers, shuffling in after Tim.

Michael is watching them both now, intently, as Sasha starts to unpack her things, with the windbreaker still draped over her shoulders. Jon waits to see if Tim will have any reaction-or garner one-but when he finally notices Michael, he just gives a friendly smile and goes back to his unpacking. Michael turns his attention to Martin without any visible reaction to Tim.

So he only knows Sasha, then?

Interesting.

* * *

Jon comments on how they’re going to have to apparently reorganize _everything_ , because there isn’t a system. It's the second time that day he's gone to look for something that wasn't where the date meant it _should_ chronically be, and he pinches his nose through the flash of irritation towards Gertrude Robinson.

Document storage is, succinctly put, an absolute disaster. Boxes will _seem_ organized at first glance, but then you’ll pull a letter dated from the 1800s from a cluster of 1950s transcriptions. It’s almost like being in Artifact Storage, in a way, except everything in the Archives is just paper and doesn’t come with preventive reasons to keep similar items apart from each other.

Michael cheerfully informs him that that _is_ their system, and that anything Jon needs, he can find for him. His grin shows a few too many teeth, just like it always seems to, and when Michael seems to realize Jon isn't going to respond the man puts the folder he'd been holding in what looks like a random spot and returns to his desk, humming.

He decides to leave the organization system be, at least for now.

* * *

The next time someone needs something- Martin, trying to find a follow-up about some aquarium related incident- Michael has already materialized with the missing document before Martin has finished mentioning it to Tim. 

Jon can’t decide if this is alarming or not.

* * *

The first time one of their laptops screeches with static and the sounds of an operating system that’s about two lines of code away from catching on fire, Jon gets his first impression of _why_ the Archives may have such a high turnover rate.

“Shit!” Tim holds down the power key, and watches the screen go dark with his other hand over his ear. 

Sasha and Martin are both looking over, bewildered, although Michael’s expression seems- irritated. But Jon gets the impression it isn’t because of the noise, for some reason.

“What on earth was that?” Jon asks when he reaches Tim’s desk.

“Dunno, boss, it just started up like that when I tried to play it back.” Tim scowls at his laptop. “Haven’t had any others do that.”

“Hmm. Well, try it again. I suppose we’ll know if it does it again.” 

That’s when Jon sees the thing in Michael’s windbreaker for the first time. 

Seemingly assured that the static wasn’t going to start up again, for the moment anyway, Michael has gone back to whatever statements and folders are piled on his desk. Jon isn’t entirely sure what he’s been doing all week; he assumes it’s leftover assignments from Gertrude, and he hasn’t wanted to ask about it. 

Jon’s still working out how best to approach the whole subject of managing someone who’s technically his senior, and thus far, it hasn’t been hard to avoid since Michael seems perfectly content to manage himself.

Michael isn’t paying any attention to Jon as he passes the man’s desk on the way back to his office, but-

Jon freezes at the sudden feeling of being- watched isn’t quite the right word. Studied might be it, or sized up, or whatever Michael had been doing to him the first day they’d met. Except, when he glances back at Michael, the man is still focused on his work.

The impossible creature curled up in his hood, though, is staring back at Jon with swirling, mismatched eyes. There definitely _hadn’t_ been anything sitting there a minute ago, except for the strange nauseating sense that yes, there _had_ been. 

Whatever it is, it seems to be constantly in motion, yet it fits perfectly into the fabric of Michael’s hood. The only colors Jon can manage to catch long enough to register are as garishly highlighter neon as the windbreaker itself. It’s headache inducing, and it’s still staring at him.

And after a moment, it’s suddenly not there anymore.

_Was_ it ever there?

Jon hurries back into his office and shuts the door.


	2. hydrate, medicate, caffeinate, repeat // michael; mid-late 2010

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A work trip has never been less fun, Michael decides. Or at least, getting back from one couldn't be any weirder.
> 
> Or: getting a new roommate out of a blender, coming to an understanding with your weird new roommate, and going to get your hazard pay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: anxiety/panic, brief disassociation, canon-typical ideation (paraphrased from MAG101 "another twist"), discussion of pronoun use
> 
> this chapter took me a little longer than i'd have liked bc i got stuck on several parts of it, but now its DONE! this is also where i admit that some of this is projection from my own experiences w anxiety & such.
> 
> also, some clarification on the timeline for this chapter: to everyone else, it's probably been about a month and a half since Michael left for Russia. For Michael, it's been a little longer, because the Distortion was messing around a little with time. for the purposes of this fic, sarah & fiona went 'missing' before the twisting, and emma while michael was away.

The first thing he can consciously manage to pull together from his racing, jumbled thoughts is that he’s _freezing_. Not just freezing, it feels like his skin is cleaving off, and someone’s lit fire to whatever was left underneath it.

Why- why is he so cold? It hadn’t been cold in the- 

And _wet_. As his awareness comes back in starts and jolts of nerves firing, the second thing he knows is that he’s soaking wet. And then he’s so aware of that fact that the edges of his consciousness start fuzzing out again, darkness with painful fractals of color swirling together at the frayed seams.

He’s soaking wet, and he’s cold all over, which means that he’s probably cold _because_ he’s wet, and he can feel the weight of his sodden hair behind him and the pull of his coat and the uncomfortable freezing press of the layers under it against his skin and the soggy texture of the wool scarf-

And well _fuck_ , Sannikov hadn’t actually existed now, had it?

So Michael is- this is probably-

 _Well,_ he thinks with a hysterical sort of clarity, _I think I’d rather have died in whatever maze I was in before_. 

That’s a weird thing to think, right? That he’d rather go back into whatever indescribable hell is hovering just outside of his awareness and memory than drown in the ocean off Russia somewhere? 

Of course, that’s assuming the shock doesn’t kill him first. That’s what actually gets you about cold water, isn’t it? The shock? And he’s already in plenty of that from whatever bits of his brain are bleeding out into the air around him.

 _You are_ not _going to die_. Something hisses at him from somewhere around his shoulders.

Michael, on instinct, opens his mouth to yelp in surprise, but is met with the frigid salt water, and finally remembers that _oh right, I'm drowning, maybe I should try to_ not _be drowning-_

There's something warm and solid against his back, and it strangely makes him think of the feeling of sitting with his back to his door, and then it falls away, and before he can get another mouthful of ocean water-

He's laying on the rug of his bedroom rug in his flat. 

“What the hell.” Micheal wheezes. 

The slightly stained ceiling above him doesn’t have any answers.

* * *

Michael frowns at his reflection, tracing a squiggly scratch down his cheek. At least he isn't bleeding from the eyes or anything horrible like that. He’s just still shaking and has a myriad of cuts and bruises that are impressions of weird, spiraling patterns.

He’s not entirely sure how to _stop_ shaking. Actually, he doesn’t want to stop, because he’s pretty sure it’s the only sign telling him that he’s still in shock and not about to head into a panic attack. Or maybe he’s already in one and he just can’t tell because the shaking is because he’s cold? 

He’d toweled himself off first thing, and turned up the heat as high as he could. He’d forgone putting on layers of warm clothes because he’d taken one look at the sweaters and thick pants he’d had leftover from packing and nearly bolted back into the bathroom at the sight. His hair is still dripping onto the tiles, pulling it down like damp weights.

He can’t actually _feel_ the water against his skin, and the damp patches growing on the back of his sleeveless shirt feels far away. Like it’s happening to someone on a screen he’s watching, or in the pages of a book.

Michael frowns at himself in the mirror. Probably dissociating, actually.

Now, the last day of his life- or… however long it’s been. Michael doesn’t know, and he honestly doesn’t want to, not yet, so he hasn’t checked his mail or opened the laptop sitting on his desk or even turned on the tv. He’d lost his cell phone along with everything else in his bag, so at least one source of temptation is gone. 

But he _knows_ it was real. He’s not a bloody stoner like _Bouchard_ used to be before he got promoted and went all uppity, so it wasn’t some horrifying hallucination. Even if it’s all still mangled and foggy and he feels like his head is still ice cold.

(And besides that, he knows everything _up_ to it was real too, so unless he’s wrong and Gertrude and Lukas decided for whatever reason to take him to the middle of the ocean off the coast of _Russia_ , and then drug him and dump him in the ocean, he was definitely on a work trip.

It had just ended in what most people would think was a fever dream.)

He knows it was real because he’s seen something like it before, something he’d always hoped _maybe_ he’d made up to disguise some other, worse trauma, but that he’s always known really _was_ what had happened. What he wouldn’t give to let all the people who’d scoffed at him and called him a liar or worse to have been right all along.

And now he knows the name of the thing, too, even though he’s not sure how.

 _The Spiral. It Is Not What It Is._ Something in his head supplies. Michael decides to resolutely keep ignoring it, and the nausea that has been increasing since he managed to get up off his floor. 

Food, first. Then… then. Whatever that is. He’ll deal with it.

* * *

Michael suddenly feels a sweeping wave of relief and belated pride in the fact that he pretty much keeps only boxed and canned foods, the sort of things that haven’t gone off in the time he was away.

… However much time that’s been. He still hasn’t checked. His laptop is staring accusingly at him from the desk in his tiny front room.

Before, he would’ve probably felt some sort of residual embarrassment that he kept so much ready food. It was just… easier to handle, most of the time. He really only cooks when he has something specific in mind and several days to plan it and make sure he isn't going to mess up his budget doing it, and that he can budget the energy for it. It’s the sort of thing he’d never admit to anyone else and is grateful to have had the sort of friends who always insisted on going to theirs for drinks and dinner.

Now, though, it means that he can just rip open the box of ready-made macaroni and tip the pasta into the boiling water and stare into space for the ten minutes it takes to cook. 

He’s glad he actually feels the hunger. It might be the nauseous kind of hunger, but it’s something to focus on besides the migraine building up behind his eyes. Something that isn’t mild, aborted flares of panic at the fact he still can’t quite feel the wetness of his shirt against his skin.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when the stove timer goes off, and works through the motions of pouring the macaroni into the colander into the sink with muscle memory. He squeezes the cheese sauce out of the packet and stirs it around absent-mindedly to heat. Next step, put the macaroni back; next step, toss some of the dried basil and garlic into it from the small cluster of spices jammed into a cabinet. 

Michael doesn’t bother with getting out a bowl and fork, and just stands by the stove and eats macaroni off the spoon, leaning back against the edge of the counter. The floor is solid under his feet, unmoving. The edges of the fake grout seem to shift a little, like he’s viewing them through water, so he resolutely looks up and studies the motley collection of fliers, reminders, and magnets stuck to the front of his fridge.

The nausea has abated, a little, although he still feels like he’s got a migraine. 

At one point, when he’s about to call it quits and stuff the remainder of macaroni into one of the plastic takeaway tubs that populate his kitchen, he feels almost like he feels something inside his chest… shift. It’s weird. 

He chalks it up to the lingering static in his limbs and pulls the tub’s lid free.

* * *

It’s nice to see that Gertrude didn’t already cancel his lease or something equally unpleasant with his flat, although all things considered he’s not surprised she didn’t bother. She has a disturbing efficiency that he’s only now piecing together, but he also doesn’t figure she’d want to have dealt with it herself.

Other assistants had had families, partners, friends, _someone_ else who would notice and inevitably receive the condolence card from the Magnus Institute that read: “Oh we’re so sorry that your loved one has died, we’ll pay out the rest of their year’s salary to you, thank you for understanding the stresses of academia,” signed the Head Archivist and with a little printed copy of the Director’s signature under hers. 

All of Michael’s friends were already _dead_ (which was to say Sarah and Fiona, and while before he’d been willing to think they’d both just left and cut off contact, now he's pretty sure they’re really gone) and he hadn’t spoken to his parents in more than eight years now. He sincerely doubted they even knew he was in London, let alone where he was working. It wasn’t like they’d have gone crying to the Director about their son, the missing assistant who had worked in their Archives and had vanished on a trip to Russia with a little old lady and a patron of the Institute.

It wasn’t like Michael had written them down in his application as emergency contacts. He’d just submitted Sarah after a year working in the Archives. 

No, she was probably just planning to leave his flat be until his landlord noticed he hadn’t paid and, when he failed to get a hold of Michael (because his phone was somewhere at the _bottom of the ocean_ ), he’d take care of it himself. Simple, and it didn’t even require Gertrude to write one of those stupid cards.

So when he finally opens his laptop, which thank god he’d left it here with the reasoning that it would be near useless on a boat in the middle of the Russian sea, he feels a thrill of spiteful pride when he makes sure his rent is paid for. 

He glances at the date, except. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no way he’s been gone _that_ long. 

He blinks, and it's suddenly different. More like he would expect.

Michael shuts the laptop after he’s sure the payment has gone through.

* * *

It’s about two hours later, after Michael’s had a nap, when things go _weird_.

He feels… not better, necessarily, although he isn’t as sore or tired. There’s still all of the emotional shit, and more physical there he feels, the more he’s suddenly aware of something _else_. 

It’s almost like a pressure, except now it’s not in his head, it’s in his whole body. There’s something itchy about it, and Michael is suddenly reminded of how he felt years ago when he didn’t have the words yet to explain why he looked in the mirror and couldn’t connect it to his brain.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes and tries to resettle himself. Maybe this is just how he’s going to feel all day

 _You aren’t very observant for a former servant of the Eye._ Something says in his ear.

Michael shrieks and throws himself off the couch. 

There’s nothing there when he glances back.

“Okay. Hearing things. That’s…” Michael presses a hand against his chest, wincing at the feeling of his heartbeat hammering through his ribs. “Not ideal.”

Everything starts happening pretty fast after that.

One second, he’s still trying to calm his heart and figure out how worried he should be about the apparent voice in his head and the not-quite-right feeling, and he’s alone in his apartment.

The next, there’s suddenly a _something_ on the floor a few feet away, shaking itself out like a disgruntled cat.

It's too many and too few limbs all at once, and too many colors like an arcade carpet. The only thing he can make out without his vision fuzzing out are fractaling spirals.

Michael decides to keep thinking of it as a cat, because otherwise, he's pretty sure he's either gonna puke or pass out. Maybe both.

The _thing_ has started off for the door now, leaving little swirling marks like footsteps in the grain of Michael's floor. He should _definitely_ stop it before it gets out into the rest of the building: he doesn't want to chase it past his neighbors or god forbid, his landlord.

He's about to move to follow it when it gets about to the door frame and everything _lurches_ , not like he's been pushed, but like he's being yanked by his gut after it. Michael shrieks in surprise, but everything has gone all _wrong_ at the edges again.

Everything spins and past the crashing he makes as he hits the floor he can hear the creature writhing and shrieking in alarm.

When he comes to again, maybe a minute later, he groans and feels something wet on his cheeks. He raises a shaking hand to wipe at it, and freezes when it touches something warm and tacky against his skin.

Okay, _now_ he's bleeding from his eyes. Michael frowns at the red on his fingertips. That’s probably not good, right? He should probably call someone about that. Except there _isn’t_ anyone to call.

The thing has stumbled back over to him now, and it seems… guilty? It's not all puffed up anymore, at any rate, and the colors are duller. He gets a sudden impression of fretting pushed up against him, _humans fragile humans bleed_ and _tethered stuck no twisting away? contained?_ and _sorry sorry sorry._

It licks at his cheek with a staticy tongue and sits, looking rather chastised.

"Don't do that again." Michael tells it. "Just- yeah, _don't."_

Weirdly enough, it listens.

* * *

Somehow, the current atmosphere is less tense and awkward than the last time Michael had sat down at a table with someone for a hard conversation. He almost wants to laugh; how was trying to start a conversation with some sort of paranormal creature that was apparently stuck to him somehow less intimidating than the last time he’d spoken to his parents?

“So. You’re.” Michael starts, and then buries his face in his hands with a groan. 

_Not sure I can answer that without melting your human mind._ The thing says, sounding fair too chipper about that apparent fact. _Unless… Do you want that?_

Michael glares at it. “I don’t, no.”

 _Pity._

Micheal rubs at his eyes and pulls on the fringe of his hair. "God." 

_Hmm. Not quite._

"So _what_ , then?"

_I told you before, you know. You really are bad at this, for a former servant of the Eye._

Michael does remember then, when he'd been staring in the mirror right after getting back. "So you're the Spiral, then?"

_Hmm. A part._

"Lovely, glad we got that cleared up." Michael lets his hands drop and looks at the thing sat across the table. "I'm guessing you're stuck here, then?" 

_We may have been… spun up together, yes._ It sounds… actually rather angry about this. 

"Right. Right." Michael nods. Leave it to the Magnus Institute to get him _stuck_ with whatever this thing really is. Probably the thing that killed Ryan, his mind helpfully supplies. He tries for humor, because hey, it's the last resort at this point. "Well, I guess I can't ask you to pay rent if you're using me like a hermit crab shell, then."

It actually _laughs_ at him.

* * *

So, the thing can get about ten feet away from Michael before they both start feeling the pressure, and any farther triggers the same immediate collapse and writhing as before. 

That’s. Nice. 

It’s really not “nice” but Michael doesn’t really have the energy to dive into that. At least it means he can keep an eye on them, and he _probably_ doesn’t need to be so worried about them eating his neighbors when they get bored.

Of course, that doesn’t stop the Distortion from trying to bolt again. 

It’s probably a good thing Michael is pretty desensitized to the sight of his own blood, and rather good at scrubbing it off his face and clothes. Years of chronic nosebleeds- among… other unfortunate recurrent things-will do that.

At least they have the decency to apologize for it while Michael stands in front of the mirror, dragging a warm washcloth across his cheeks.

* * *

Michael isn’t sure how long it takes, before they’re both exhausted and sniping back and forth, before the Distortion (that’s a word that had just slipped into his head; he’s not entirely sure what it means or if it actually belongs to them or not) heaves a sigh and finally goes limp. 

_We aren’t getting anywhere_ , they grumble. 

It’s- it’s weird, and still all a little tinged by hysteria, if Michael’s honest, but this is just. This is just his life now, right? 

"You okay?" Michael pokes at it with his toes. 

_Wouldn't know_ . It heaves itself up and suddenly scales his leg, resettling on his shoulder. _Hmm. You're tall. That's a nice feature. But-_

Michael has the sudden sensation like something sharp and cold just went through his neck up into his skull. "What- what are you _doing_ in there?"

 _You had cobwebs. I've taken care of them._ They tell him, sounding an odd mix of pleased and irritated all at once. _I'm surprised the Archivist would allow the Web to cloud her assistants like that._

"I have no idea what you're talking about." 

_Oh. I hadn't considered that she might not have_ Seen _it._ They continue on, completely ignoring Michael. He gets the feeling they're talking more to themself and at him than with him. _Regardless, it's all gone now. You're welcome. Should make remembering things easier, if that's something you care about._

"Right, then. Thanks?" Michael looks at it for a second, and then on impulse, scratches at where he assumes a chin would be if it was a normal animal.

He's rewarded with a purr.

Huh.

* * *

They… they make it work.

* * *

“I’m not going to keep calling you ‘creature’. C’mon, you have to have _something_ resembling a name.” 

_I do not_ have _a name. It is antithetical to my nature to_ have _a name. I am incapable of_ having _a name._

“Sure. But I need _something_ to call you, okay? Humans- humans like that. And you can call me Michael, so, fess up. Reciprocate a little.”

 _I do not have the sense of self that necessitates a_ name _._

“You’re arguing just to be irritating, aren’t you.”

Silence.

_… Fine. You may call me the Distortion. It will suffice._

“I’ll take it. See, that was easy, all you had to do was say ‘you already know’.”

The Distortion ignores him.

* * *

Time’s all funny now, but the tension has eased off, now. One day, Michael checks and it's autumn, which is weird, but the next it says it's still July. 

The outside view of his flat has never changed, at least not that he's noticed. But the fridge and cabinets are always stocked, which means he doesn't have to actually go out. 

Maybe he should be a little more concerned about all of it, but really, he’s grateful. He still isn’t ready to face whatever he’s going to have to when he does leave. So he’ll take slowly navigating life around the thing Gertrude stuffed in his head over that.

* * *

“I’m sorry for calling you an it.” Michael tells them one afternoon. He’s not sure when, exactly, he'd made the switch, but now that he has, there's a bit of guilt rolling in his gut. 

_Why? It suits me as well as anything else._ The Distortion seems… puzzled, if the buzzing and the sudden prickling of their interest is anything to go by.

“It was mean, and I shouldn’t have called you that.” He says.

 _You can call me whatever you like if it keeps your fragile human consciousness intact._ The Distortion sounds amused, but still edged with curiosity. _I am beyond your need for things like that. I don’t care._

“It’s just- look.” Michael sighs. “I know- I know what it’s like to get reduced like that. I know you say you don’t care, but I do, so take the damn apology.”

The Distortion is silent for a moment, considering this. _You, Michael Shelley, are a creature of many surprises._

* * *

Michael tries not to let the Distortion know what he's thinking, but it turns out it's pointless to try hiding anything from a creature that's living half in your head; or, if there is a way, he hasn’t figured it out yet. 

Most of the time, the Distortion lets him keep the dignity of not consciously remembering that fact. They seem content to focus on their own thoughts, only poking when Michael does something that intrigues them, or when they’ve come up with another half-baked idea that they want his “expert human opinion” on.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still skimming off of his. They are, after all, all twisted up inside, and it probably takes a decent amount of effect for the Distortion to completely ignore him. 

Michael thinks of it a little like a colander draining pasta. Sometimes the holes are a little more covered than other times, and sometimes you shake it to make it drain faster and more water comes out.

Things are harder to keep away from them when he’s having a bad day, because he doesn’t have the energy to fight off his own brain and keep an eye on the _other_ brain. 

Today is one of those days, and when the Distortion catches wind of what he’s thinking, they recoil and hiss at him.

 _You are a_ good _host,_ they tell him, voice trilling and echoing in the still air around them. _Robinson is a horrible, terrible liar, but she knew you were suited for us_ . _That is true._

“Gee, thanks.” Michael croaks, before he pulls the blanket up and over his head. He doesn’t want to look at them, he doesn’t want to _think_ about Gertrude and how she’d played him like the fool he is. Oh, poor, pitiful, _stupid_ Michael, who didn’t know any better than to throw his lot and his loyalty in with the first authority figure who didn’t seem like they were actively trying to twist it for their own whims.

He’d helped because he’d _wanted_ to, because he _likes_ to help, and it for once wasn’t something people had looked at him and expected. Sure, he’d been expected to do his job, but the pleasant surprise and gratitude people gave him when he’d offered to do things for them or just done them off-hand was nice. It was nice to bring snacks and drinks by when his coworkers forgot about that sort of thing, or to offer to do a little visit to a statement giver now and again so that they could take off early for a date or because they looked like they were about to pass out at their desk.

Honestly, when Gertrude had been prickly about it, seemed more annoyed than anything that he was interrupting her to bring her tea or a biscuit or a file he’d spent the afternoon translating so she wouldn’t have to, it had been reassuring. She’d never told him to quit it, or complained, so he’d just taken it as the way that she was, and she’d never asked him for anything more. Not like his parents or family had. Michael only had to offer what he wanted to offer, and there wasn’t anything else.

Of course, it turns out she was planning to feed him to an eldritch fear god of madness incarnate from the beginning, so. All was fair, then. Friendly care in exchange for his life and all, no big deal or anything.

Michael groans and presses his eyes tightly shut. Even the Distortion hadn’t actually _wanted_ to be with him; he wasn’t an avatar, or whatever it was the fear gods evidently went around picking for themselves. He was just the human who’d gotten himself thrown in the blender. They were _stuck_ like this because he’d trusted Gertrude, because he’d listened to her, and because he’d followed her instructions. 

Sure, he wasn’t sorry he’d actually stopped the Spiral from making the whole world like the place that haunted his nightmares, but… had it had to go like _this?_

_There was a man named Michael Shelley,_ he thinks to himself, a little hysterically and in his head the voice is high pitched and wavering, _and he was born, he was pointless, and he should have died._

That’s the last real coherent though he has before he just starts crying outright and curls up tighter into a ball. He isn’t even aware that the Distortion has moved until he suddenly feels a warm, tingly weight pressing against him. It’s a weird feeling, one that both rests on top of him and also seems like there are parts of it _in_ him, in his chest and his arms, kneading into his muscles and pressing somehow against his organs. 

He tries to shift to see what exactly they’re doing, but he can’t get his arms to move, and the Distortion suddenly speaks again, softer this time and with a shocking sincerity that echoes gently at him. _There was a man named Michael Shelley, and he was born, and he lived. And there was a thing that called themself the Distortion, and they liked Michael Shelley, and wanted to terrorize the people who had hurt him. So they did._

“Are you admitting to planning to terrorize the Institute?” Michael weakly asks, feeling tension slowly draining out of him under the Distortion’s pressure.

 _Yes._ The Distortion answers. _I think you would like it._

Michael thinks about that answer for a while, staring up at the ceiling while the Distortion mimics a weighted blanket.

* * *

There’s really only one thing for it. 

He goes into work.

* * *

Rosie seems delighted as usual to see him, and smiles and tells him that she was a little worried when he didn’t come back in when Gertrude was back, which is just a little reassuring considering how _many_ assistants go missing. At least _someone_ notices.

 _I would notice_ , grumbles the prickling heat along his neck. The Distortion kneads for a moment at his neck before they settle back down, and he can tell they’re trying to make themself inconspicuous in the stronghold of a rival power. _You would be missed._

Michael decides to ignore it, because anything else would draw more attention, but he’s weirdly flattered. Sure, it’s the truth because if Michael dies, the Distortion will go with him now that they’re all mangled together, but it’s still nice to hear _someone_ say it. 

Everyone else who would miss him is dead. It was a pretty short list anyway.

It never really hit Michael when he started working at the Institute how strange it was that he’d been hired- he’d just been relieved to have a job that paid enough to keep a roof over his head _and_ eat regular meals. He’d been all of twenty at the time, and certainly hadn’t had any of the qualifications you’d expect of any sort of assistant, let alone the sort needed for working in what counted as a library. The closest he’d gotten to experience was the aiding he’d done for the library at his school. 

Thinking about it now, it’s pretty obvious why he was hired. Gertrude _knew_ he’d encountered the Spiral, and that was all it took to make putting him through a few intense months in the Institute’s library before throwing him into the Archive’s bullpen with people at least a half decade older than him worth it to her. 

He’s trying very hard not to start scowling as he fumbles with his keycard at the door that leads down to the Archives, if only so Rosie doesn’t ask him what’s wrong. He isn’t sure he could come up with a convincing lie. Thankfully, no one’s thought to take his access off, and once he gets the card through, the door clicks open and Michael can disappear down the hall.

* * *

Gertude’s door is closed, which isn’t unusual. It’s nearly always closed, if not always. It keeps the noise from the bullpen out, and whatever plotting Gertrude is doing in. 

Michael resolutely does _not_ look at his desk. He already knows what he’ll see: nothing. Someone will have tidied up all of his things into a neat cardboard box to be shoved into the back of document storage, barring anyone coming to ask for it. There’s already several other boxes back there. Michael had packed several of them himself.

The other desks are empty, too. He can’t let himself think about that right now, so he doesn’t. The Distortion is humming in his ear, something between nerves and laughter. There’s definitely a sense of dizzying recklessness bleeding over from them at their being now truly in the roots of an enemy’s power.

He doesn’t bother knocking.

He gets the immediate gratification of Gertrude startling at her desk. There’s a statement on her desk, and a tape recorder whirring away next to it that immediately starts to whine when Michael enters.

Michael’s never seen Gertrude be anything but calmly reserved in the decade-or-so that he’s worked for her, and it wouldn’t be quite right to say that that changes now. Whatever momentary break in her composure (eyes wide and lips parted like she cut off whatever she was reading aloud for the recorder) is quickly locked behind her usual demeanor.

There’s a more than slightly awkward silence. Michael’s pretty sure the Distortion is in a staring contest with the tape recorder still whirring on the desk, and he can feel them trying to will it to coil and explode into a pile of useless bits.

“Michael.” Gertrude says, tone even and like so many times before, when he’d come in with tea or a missing file or some other excuse to check on her. It simultaneously makes his shoulders go cold and prickly with nervous energy and his neck starts to heat with anger. 

“Gertrude.” He says back, and if he’s honest, it surprises him a little. He’d known already that she’d _definitely_ pushed him way beyond his limit, but it’s still strange to hear himself act like it. 

He’ll probably have another cry about it later, but that will be later and he’ll pick something up from the corner store on the way home and the Distortion will probably request another nature documentary to watch while he stares at the wall and has part fourteen of whatever extended crisis he’s going through.

Anyway.

The tape recorder _shrieks_ when the Distortion makes themself known, shifting to coil up around Michael’s neck. They’re pulsing through patterns and neon bright colors like a chameleon, and Gertrude actually does look surprised, now.

“That’s not what I expected.” From the tone, Michael gets the impression she’d like nothing better than to pin the Distortion down and figure out exactly _how_ they’d both survived. Because, he knows, she definitely hadn’t expected both of them. 

“I aim to please.” He flashes his teeth, and something on the desk twists and pops under the Distortion’s attention. 

“So what do you want, then?” There’s something else to the question that almost hits him in the chest, but slides off as soon as it reaches the static the Distortion is practically chain-producing as a response to being in an enemy camp. “Revenge, perhaps? Or,” Gertrude frowns for a second, “Have you managed to tame the Spiral?” 

“No, no, and _no_ .” Michael shakes his head, letting himself scowl. The Distortion hisses from his shoulder. “I think you’ve missed why I- _we_ \- came back here.” 

Gertrude is quiet, watching them both. 

“You can do whatever you want in your office, but if you _ever_ try to drag another assistant into this. Well.” Michael nods at the Distortion, who grins. “Yeah.”

Gertrude’s eyes are narrowed, now, and Michael feels an uncomfortable pressure for a moment before it’s chased away by the Distortion’s low-level static. 

She doesn’t say anything, and Michael decides he can’t stay in her office anymore.

“Anyway. You know where to find me if you need anything!” 

He lets the door slam behind him, and his feet carry him back to the empty desk that’s been his for so long. He feels like he’s just yanked his hand out of a bear trap before it could spring, or done something else equally foolish and strangely brave and had it end in success. “Shit. I didn’t know I had that _in_ me.”

 _Hmm. I did._ The Distortion shimmers out of sight, though the pressure on his shoulders remains. 

“Less of a conversation and more of a direct threat, huh.” Michael lets himself breath for a bit, leaning against the desk.

 _Did you want to talk to her?_ The Distortion asks.

Michael thinks about it for a second. Had he? 

… No, he hadn’t. There’s nothing really to be said. He thinks the “I hate you and I’m angry” came through pretty clear in the threat. He doesn’t want to sit down and try and have a _heart to heart_ with Gertrude or something. It’s not worth it. There’s nothing there to bother trying to get.

“Nah. This is good.” He shuts his eyes for a minute. Then he shifts, glancing at the empty desk, wonders what part of storage his box of stuff would be in. “Ready to go up?”

* * *

If Gertrude had looked caught off guard when Michael came into her office, it’s nothing compared to the open fear and hatred on Elias’ when he sees him.

Or, rather, them. Michael’s pretty sure that even if the Distortion hadn’t manifested as the worst most hideous and mind-numbing travel pillow, Elias’ would have seen right through him. He’s not sure _how_ he knows that; it must be one of the things that’s bleeding through from the Distortion’s collection of disjointed facts.

But there’s something else about Elias’ gaze that strikes him as odd. Usually, encounters with Elias leave him feeling unnerved and a little on edge; just one of the many strange differences between Elias-the-Storage-Stoner and Elias-Competent-Boss. 

Now, though? He doesn’t feel it. Just the usual weight of a look from someone who doesn’t like him, and who he definitely doesn’t like in return.

He gets the sudden feeling that Elias has tried to pin him down, like a butterfly to a card, and found the butterfly snapping teeth down on his fingers. 

The Distortion _had_ said that the Spiral and the Eye didn’t mix well, but Michael can finally let himself feel the relief in that. It’s actually a bit _thrilling_.

“Hey, boss.” Michael grins, lopsided and drops to sit in the chair in front of Elias’s desk. “I think we need to discuss my hazard pay.”

The Distortion is giggling in his ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it was only AFTER i agonized over parts of this for hours that i went "wait. why do i need to exposition everything when the distortion is literally a spiral creature who would never just explain Everything" and then it was all much easier fhdshf
> 
> also i realize now i should also mention that michael is trans! this will come up again later but since i did make a couple references to it here, now's probably a good time to mention it.
> 
> next chapter we will be back to jon in the present, as it were! it will probably also be shorter this one just wildly got away from me. the plan is to update once per week from here on out. thanks for reading!! c:
> 
> chapter title from "over my head" by judah & the lion!


	3. follow the clicks in my ear // jon; mid 2014

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon thinks that the team is settling in rather well, all things considered, considering the possible implications of the fate of a former employee. And the possible sixth occupant of the Archives that may or may not be there.
> 
> Or: variations on crime in the Archives, from theft to murder to disappearances to trespassing; and musings on the thief.

Jon would like to say that he forgot the creature in Michael’s windbreaker. That he’d chalked it up to a momentary, if strange, fiction of the human mind’s instinct to recognize patterns and faces. Maybe a little bit induced by the stress of settling into a position he still can’t quite figure out how or why he’s qualified for.

Parts of any of those assertions would be true. He’s certainly still finding his footing, and the thing about facial recognition is true. It's the same insistent pattern recognition that pulls faces from wood-grain and popcorn ceilings. 

But he can’t get it out of his head. Despite the fact that even part of his own head is telling him that there had never been anything there, he’d still seen it.

And despite what his coworkers believe, it’s not the first time he’s seen something supernatural in person and believed it was there. He’s been very careful to maintain the air of someone who doesn’t believe anything that comes through the Institute's doors is real.

(Discounting Leitners, of course, which essentially everyone in the Institute knows are very, very real and very, very irritating to deal with. They’ve all been too involved in researching their whereabouts to doubt that those books aren’t bad news. Or any of the dangerous items in Artefact Storage. There’s a reason turnover is so high in that department.

Not that any of them know Jon’s actually been close enough to a Leitner to read one, of course.

But there's a difference between antique oddities and cursed books, and ghosts and people with supernatural powers and creatures made of teeth. Between a Leitner with a spider in it and the neon-bright creature he knows he’d seen.)

Except- Michael’s just a person. Michael Shelley has worked for the Magnus Institute for over a decade, he has a file with all of his personnel reviews, a note of each training he’s been to, every travel expense he’s had for the Institute and place he'd gone to in search of interviews and on-location surveys.

(There’s something there, in those records. They suddenly stop in 2010, mid-July, though Jon knows the former Head Archivist continued to travel until a few months before her disappearance. It’s also an interesting date because shortly after, the second-to-last assistant had gone. 

No one else was ever hired, or brought on from another department, and Michael has no travel dates or expenses noted for anything past that. 

Jon still hasn’t sat down with him yet, to ask about Ms. Robinson’s managerial style, and if there’s anything Michael would like to change or continue about it now that Jon is Head Archivist. 

About if he’d liked his predecessor, because Jon honestly can’t tell. There’s a picture on Michael’s desk of him with two women also wearing Archives badges, but the corner of it is torn away, and both women look like they were in their late thirties at the time it was taken. Michael looks several years younger in it, himself.

Jon has the suspicion there may have been more office drama down here than he’d previously realized.)

And, of course, there’s the recent promotion to Senior Assistant now that there’s a new team filling out the Archives. It seems like something that ought to have been done several years before, but Jon has the impression, at least from the other records he had been able to find of previous coworkers and predecessors of Michael’s, that Ms. Robinson wasn’t really the promoting type.

Maybe Michael is a slightly strange sort of person, with the way he defends the way things are currently stored (whatever way that _is_ ), and the way he always seems to be around when Jon is. But he’s just another employee of the Magnus Institute. 

Except.

Jon knows what he saw. What something tried to convince him he _hadn’t_. And it had seemed perfectly at home in Michael’s hood, like a cat on it’s favorite perch. 

He can’t just _ask_ Michael about it, obviously; he’d sound as mad as some of the people who come here. You can’t just _ask_ your new, more-qualified-than-you, coworker if they have a pet impressionist/highlighter-outlined/migraine-inducing creature living in their windbreaker.

So he keeps an eye on him when he goes out to get something- and this means leaving his office more often than he'd left his desk back in Research, much to the delight of his _other_ Assistants.

Priority One is still trying to get through the massive backlog of unfiled and incomplete statements. If he happens to see anything else strange, he'll deal with it then. 

Jon eyes the stack of mismatched files on the corner of his desk and groans.

* * *

Jon comes out into the bullpen, about to ask for something, when he notices two of the desks are empty. Well, not empty; there are short piles of folders and laptops and empty mugs, but there’s no one sitting at them.

“Where are my other two assistants?” Jon finds himself asking, frowning at the empty chairs. Finding one of the assistants gone at any time isn’t necessarily unusual: they have cases to work on, research to do, more than one messy storeroom to work through, and the break room, of course. But usually, if more than one is out, he knows about it. 

And usually, when two are gone, it’s Tim and Sasha. But they’re both here, sitting at their desks. It’s Michael and Martin who are gone.

Tim glances up from his laptop, following Jon’s eye-line. “What- oh! They’re in document storage. Been there for… a bit now?”

“Michael found out Martin started in the library and immediately carted him off to do some filing.” Sasha chimes in, not looking up from her laptop.

“He took Martin… for filing.” Jon repeats, blinking. That’s not the answer he was expecting. On one hand, he _knows_ that Michael does a good deal of the filing, by the nature of being the Senior Assistant among them (even if Jon still isn’t sure if whatever system he’s using can be considered productive), but he hadn’t expected Michael to let anyone _help_ him with it for that reason.

On the other hand, he hadn’t expected Michael to pick Martin out as his helper in any case. He’d been expecting Michael to enlist Sasha in anything he needed an extra set of hands for, seeing as they were friends. 

“Right, then.” He says, a little lamely. 

He can’t just go back to his office immediately, so he wanders over to the boxes that had just been brought down by Research: a mix of returned references and recent intake. 

Jon glances into the larger of the Archives’ storage rooms, following the faint sound of music. It’s fairly easy to find Michael if you just follow it- anytime he isn’t in the bullpen he tends to put his earbuds away and let it play out loud. Not loud enough to bother everyone back at their desks, but enough that it’s fairly easy to find him again.

“So, these are,” The sounds of rustling papers are followed by a softer noise of the lid of a box being removed, “mostly from the seventies, looks like? Probably don’t need to do much with these.”

“Should we be fixing the order they’re in by name, or is this more of a general time period thing?” There’s Martin.

“Ah- depends.” More rustling. “Honestly, it varies a bit. Sometimes one suits a set better than something else. Here, see: these are all from seventy-eight, but they’re in here by-”

Frustratingly, whatever explanation Michael is giving is suddenly cut off by the music seemingly getting louder. Which doesn’t really make sense, but maybe Michael had realized someone was standing a little awkwardly by the door and was making a point.

Or maybe Jon just needs to go drink a glass of water and stop fussing for a few minutes, as per Tim and Sasha’s analysis.

* * *

Jon catches Martin later to ask about what filing was like.

“I mean, it’s all a bit- complicated?” Martin answers, frowning. “But it makes sense to Michael, and after a bit, I think I got it too? But I can’t explain what it is exactly.”

He must catch sight of Jon’s frustrated look because he sheepishly smiles and adds, “Sorry.”

“That’s alright.” Jon says, because he has to say _something_ , and Michael’s just come back into the bullpen from the direction of the break room, and he has the impression that Michael would give him a rather disappointed look if he was rude about it. “So long as it got done.”

* * *

There’s also the small detail of the statement files that have been disappearing off Jon’s desk.

At first, he honestly hadn’t noticed. There are _so many_ loose files in the Archives, nearly littering every surface, and every day there seem to be more of them. 

Some of the ones that make up many of the boxes in the bullpen, at least, can be fairly quickly sorted into the newer cabinets and forgotten as they come directly down from Research and Intake as the most recent statements. These come in neat little folders with stapled on follow-up and research, perfectly packaged for filing.

The older ones, though, which are the primary concern of their efforts, are the ones that have started to waltz themselves away. Some have even gone missing in pieces; Jon’s encountered more than one folder that simply has the supplementary confirmation that the statement that _ought_ to be there has been marked for archiving.

And it isn’t just Jon’s desk; Martin and Tim have both lost several folders. When it had just been Martin, Jon had assumed that he’d simply misplaced them himself, and then Tim mentioned he’d lost the statement that had set his laptop off the week before.

He’s asked Sasha about it, because he’d realized she hadn’t returned one he _knew_ he’d given her, and she’d given him a confused look and insisted she’d never had the statement in the first place.

It’s not that weird, not really. There are, after all, hundreds and hundreds of statements and material down here. Sometimes things just get accidentally moved, or end up under stacks of other items. It’s the sort of normal office mishap that happened on occasion in Research too. 

Except, it keeps happening. It’s not such a large number as to be immediately alarming, only a few dozen of many many more they’ve seen in the first few weeks of working in the Archives. But it’s enough to intrigue him, and set him admittedly a little on edge. 

Jon isn’t quite as worried about the lack of experience anymore, or the general lack of idea of what they’re really meant to be doing, but it certainly doesn’t reflect well on a Head Archivist for so much of what he’s meant to be archiving disappearing. 

He’s started a little post-it note for his personal notebook with what he can remember of the ones he’s glanced over only to have them later seemingly disappear into the Archive’s musty air.

It’s odd, the pattern that’s starting to develop. There are several names and a couple of recurrent themes. Most of them are the sort of thing that, frustratingly enough, attempting to research for an idea of what has gone missing results in nothing but a few social media profiles and otherwise dead ends.

(There is _one_ name, from one that he’s barely even started to look at before something seems to yank it off his desk and spirit it away, that does show up online when he searches. One “Gerard Keay”, which pulls up a slew of gossip journals from a few years ago and a similarly dated acquittal related to murder charges.

He closes that tab and decides to hold off on looking up the others just yet. If only because whatever force is stealing the statements _definitely_ hadn’t liked him looking at it.)

It’s also strange because Jon would have assumed that whatever’s doing it would have had a vested interest in stealing _all_ the statements that he’s starting to think of as the true ones. But it hasn’t; there have still been plenty of statements that can’t go through their laptops recording software. 

Tim suggests the culprit might be a ghost. Sasha laughs and says something about how they’re all just stressed by the new environment. Martin and Michael propose the joint theory that it’s possible they may have accidentally refiled a couple of them.

Of course, Michael can’t locate them when asked, so there’s that.

Jon starts thinking of the thing he thought he’d seen in Michael’s windbreaker as the thing taking the statements. It makes sense, anyway: why wouldn’t it be? Something that no one can explicitly prove or deny. 

He hasn’t seen it again, not really, although he sometimes gets the feeling of something considering him with an intensity. 

* * *

“So, it’s been a couple weeks.” Tim says, casual. It’s the sort of tone Jon knows as Tim’s ease-in to questions or comments that usually result in ruffled feathers or at least spirited debates. “Any thoughts on what happened to Gertrude?”

It’s a rare lunch break where everyone is in the break room: usually at least one of the Assistants goes out, which means someone else usually goes (normally Tim and Sasha, and then they drag Martin with them), or someone’s out doing something for a statement. 

Michael and Martin are huddling together by the kettle, waiting for the water to finish boiling. They’d been talking, before the rest of the Archives team had entered the break room, but are now quiet.

Jon watches Michael intently, but he doesn’t react beyond glancing over at Tim before returning his attention to the kettle. 

For a second, Jon feels almost like he can tell that there’s still something paying attention to Tim from that direction, something that isn’t either of the men standing there, but it’s gone as soon as he notices. Probably nothing, then; just his imagination playing up because it knows he _wants_ to have some kind of confirmation.

“Michael, you actually worked down here. Did you, y’know, see anything unusual?” Tim asks, leaning back with his chair and gesturing with his fork. 

“I wasn’t actually here that day, so no.” Michael turns around now, placing his phone onto the counter and crossing his arms loosely. Jon can just make out the numbers of a waiting timer on his phone. “I had the end of that week off- I don’t really take time off, really? So I’d hit my limit on what I could have saved without using it, so I just, y'know. Used a couple days of it to extend the weekend a little.”

“Wow, most exciting thing to happen here since that big mess in Storage last year and you were on vacation.” Sasha comments, taking the chair next to Tim.

“Vacation was plenty exciting!” Michael laughs. “I spent most of it outside. Or helping my flatmate with things.”

“Sounds riveting.” Sasha says, and Michael tosses the crumbled up foil packet from his tea at her.

“So you really didn’t have any idea what was going on at the Institute until you got back?” Martin asks, jumping a little when the kettle whistles. 

Michael shakes his head. “No, I heard about it the next day, after whoever went down there found out she was gone.” 

“Oh, wow, that must've been weird to find out while you were out of the Archives.” Martin pauses in setting the tea up to steep, looking at Michael with a frown.

“It was even weirder to hear totally third party.” Sasha comments. “He called me when I was halfway through laundry about it.”

The conversation lapses for a few minutes as half the room eats and the other half turns attention from the tea to get their own lunches out from the fridge and onto plates. Michael seems to remember that he was in the middle of explaining when his phone timer goes off. 

“Yeah, one minute I’m unpacking books; next thing I know, Rosie’s calling me to say I’m on leave for the next week. I told her that I was pretty sure I wasn’t- I was honestly scared, because I’ve never been _mandated_ before.” Michael pulls the bag from his cup and shakes it a few times, drops coming off to land in the cup. “I thought I had some kind of HR complaint I didn’t know about. Which was- which was pretty silly, since I‘m pretty sure I’d have gotten called for a review if that had been it.”

He chuckles and takes a sip of his tea before he frowns and adds another spoon of sugar. “Anyway. She told me that it’d come straight from the Director that I was going to have off. And then she told me it was because there were currently police everywhere in the Archives and that everyone else was being kicked out of the building for the next day anyway, and that she’d call me when I was allowed to come back down.”

Sasha makes a sympathetic noise. “And that’s about when you called me.”

“What was it like coming back after that?” Martin has a wide eyed look.

“Honestly, I don’t know what I was expecting- maybe a note or something?” Michael frowns, and then shakes his head. “Doubt the police would’ve left one if she had, but it’s not like we were friends. She was a pretty hands-off sort of boss. Don’t think she’d have sprung for a weird cryptic letter about ‘if you’re reading this, then I’m dead’ or something when she never gave me a birthday card.”

“So you think she disappeared, then?” Tim leans forward again, enraptured. 

“Well, I overheard Kathy in the library saying that they found blood in her office? So maybe?” Michael shrugs. “I mean, I know Gertrude had gotten like, not hate mail, but definitely messages before of implied dislike from like, peers or something? So I don’t know.”

Jon studies Michael’s face, looking for any hit of dishonesty or anger or _anything_. But all he can find is the same vague curiosity anyone else in the Institute has about the events, besides some expected anxiety and upset that equally anyone would expect Gertrude’s final assistant to have about the disappearance (and presumed death) of their boss. 

“Well, that’s all very nice, but I’d rather not talk about a probably dead woman while eating?” Martin cuts in, shuffling a little.

Michael and Tim both immediately launch into “Oh, sorry Martin,” and “Ah, that’s fair,” and Jon retreats back out of the break room.

Not very enlightening about Gertrude, really, but then nothing down here seems to be. He still needs to have Michael come in and discuss managerial styles.

* * *

Sasha gets back from a follow-up one day with leaves in her hair and a slightly wild expression. “Well, that was exciting.”

“Do we have another for the crime board?” Tim calls, perking up at his desk.

“Excuse me,” Jon looks over from the box he’s looking through, “the _what_?”

“Oh, you know.” Tim grins and waves a hand. “Sometimes things get exciting.”

“I’m scared to ask if you’ve got my name on whatever this is.” Michael’s pulled his earbuds out and has his chin propped up on his hands, expression crinkled with amusement. Today’s windbreaker reminds Jon of a disposable cup pattern, with colors selected for high visibility under a black-light. “But I think my score might be a little alarming.”

“What, have you been arrested on Institute business or something?” Tim swivels his chair to look at Michael.

There’s a moment of silence in the bullpen, broken only by Sasha pulling the leaves from her hair and the clicking of Martin’s pen. 

“Wait, you _have_ been arrested?” 

“I can’t even remember what I was trying to find out, or why Gertrude wanted it so bad, but I, ah,” Michael sheepishly grins, lopsided and with his head canting slightly, “I did get arrested. Ended up in a drunk tank and had to call one of my coworkers for help.” 

“What did you even do?” Sasha was trying to hide her laughter behind her hand.

“Oh, y’know, trespassing.” He shrugs. “I think they were also calling it breaking and entering, but technically speaking, I didn’t actually break anything. So it was just entering. Sa- my coworker thought it was hilarious.”

“I can imagine.” Sasha isn’t hiding her laughter anymore, half bowed towards her desk and shaking. “You probably looked properly ridiculous doing it.”

Tim makes an exaggerated noise of disquiet. “How do Michael and Martin have the highest counts?”

“It’s always the ones you don’t expect.” Martin finally looks up from the papers on his desk with a mock seriousness that sends Michael and Sasha giggling.

“For legal reasons, I’m not hearing any of this.” Jon says, pointedly, but he shakes his head in amusement as he walks back into his office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whooo more plot setup stuff! another chapter that was difficult for me to get through bc all i wanna do is work on the later parts after ive got everything set up haha.
> 
> we've also now had every pov character at least mentioned, though we're still missing several major players for later!
> 
> yes the distortion is stealing the statements fhdsfh. what else are they going to do, not cause minor inconveniences?
> 
> next chapter we'll be meeting a 'new' face and getting more history lessons from sasha c;
> 
> chapter title from "overture" by ajr!


	4. you'll have more room for some perspective // sasha; mid 2014

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha always enjoys a nice night in with a friend after a day at a new job.
> 
> or: meetings past and present, takeaway, and penguins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick note! this chapter has a couple sections that are technically set in the past- these are separated by dividers and also appear within (parenthesis). the first would be dated late 2012, the second is approx two weeks before the first chapter (so mid 2014!) the rest takes place in the continuing mid 2014 timeline

Watching Jon try to navigate around Michael is… honestly about as funny as Sasha had imagined it would be. He definitely has _no_ idea what to do with him, either on a personal or a professional level. The whole change-over from departments is one thing; the complete stranger to Jon’s former albeit limited Magnus-Institute-Mandated social circle is another.

That’s without counting the Distortion’s outright theft of statements.

She’s also very glad that Michael has taken an immediate liking to Martin. She’d been hoping that he would. There’s a lot about Martin that reminds her of Michael, just several years removed from the confidence she knows him with. 

On their first day, Tim scoots his chair over, putting his chin into his hand and waggling his eyebrows at her. “So, that’s the oh-so mysterious Shelley, then?”

“Oh hush.” Sasha rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning. “Yeah, that’s Michael.”

“Y’know, I don’t think I was picturing quite that much hair when you described him to me. Or the height,” Tim commented, “but the jacket is _definitely_ as advertised.”

“I told you he was tall, Tim.”

“I didn’t think you meant _taller than Martin_.”

Sasha laughs. “Like I said, I told you he was tall!”

* * *

Sasha had met Michael a few years ago now, when she’d started working on more Archive-adjacent projects. He’d been the only archival assistant left at that point, and for whatever reason Elias wasn’t willing to shuffle anyone else down, so it meant that when Sasha needed something from the Archive’s storage, she went to Michael.

Finding him wasn't hard, when she went down to the Archives in search of someone to help her cross-reference a note on something she was finishing up. There were very few employees of the Magnus Institute who were that tall, and there was only one that had long curly blond hair.

Plus, Gertrude only had one assistant, so either someone identical to Gertrude’s only assistant had broken in and had decided to sit at a desk and do some work instead of stealing statements, or he was probably _not_ a robber, but in fact Michael Shelley.

He'd make a terrible robber, anyway, what with his bright pink and purple windbreaker. And despite being easily the tallest man Sasha’s ever met, he’s not exactly threatening either. Capable, sure, since he seems to know exactly where to find what she’s referencing in what is otherwise a disordiant mess. But not threatening.

Weird, though, that there weren’t any other assistants. Up in Research, Sasha’s used to having nearly a dozen people around at any given moment: fellow researchers, her supervisor, interns and students from the Library, occasional visitors from other departments. 

Even Artefact Storage had its own small army, even if that army rotated out near constantly.

Knowing what she knows now, of course, that Elias is _scared_ of the tall man with his loose messy curls and dopey near constant grin, and even _more_ scared of the thing that isn’t a hideously garish windbreaker, it makes more sense. Michael hadn’t wanted anyone else to be working for Gertrude, something she’d known at the time but not _why_.

It was silly now to remember that she’d thought he was _jealous_ of anyone else getting close.

She’d been half right, but only about the getting close part. Michael _had_ been ready to fight tooth and drawn-out-knife-claw against Elias to keep Gertrude from getting anyone else.

It just hadn’t been jealousy that motivated him.

So that had been the start of it all, really. The slow, gradual descent into the Archives that also marked the slow, slightly more accelerated graduation of her life from studying objects and working through interviews and transcriptions to running face to face with the real, actual living (though usually not-living) things.

She wouldn’t change any of it.

* * *

(Really, it had been anti-climatic when she met the Distortion for the first time.

There hadn’t been anything spooky about it, no rival power or Avatars trying to sneak into the Institute, no cursed and dangerous artefact that required the attention of their basement dwelling Spiral manifestation.

No, Sasha had just been going down to the Archives to ask Michael if he wanted to go out for lunch with her. In all the trips she’d made down to the Archives, she’d never seen anyone else in the bullpen, and Michael remained a mystery in the Research gossip circle. 

It seemed… honestly pretty lonely, and Michael was friendly and fun to talk to when she came down for work. He always seemed glad to see her, and not just because they were rapidly becoming friends.

So Sasha is completely unprepared, when she comes down, to hear distant voices echoing from the break room. 

Sasha’s never actually seen Gertrude out of her office, not since she’d meet Michael. She’d had a few encounters with the Head Archivist in the years before that, mostly at company events. But never actually out in the Archives.

No one else comes down here, unless it’s to bring boxes of recent intake from Research. So who’s talking to Michael?

She follows the voices down the little hall that separates the bullpen from the break room, and pauses at the door. It’s definitely Michael talking, but the other voice is… strange. It sounds like someone’s taken Michael’s voice and changed all the settings on an audio program. Like it’s almost coming through water or static to reach her ears.

“I don’t see why you’re so interested.”

 _“I’m not_ interested.”

“Sounds like something someone who was _interested_ would say.”

_“I am not!”_

“Hmm. Sure.”

The back and forth goes on for a few more denials and fond-sounding affirmations, before it quiets down. Sasha decides that’s her cue to enter, and raps her knuckles against the doorway.

“Hey, Michael-” She stops as she enters. It takes her brain a second to catch up with the input from her eyes, to process it enough to try and tell her what she’s seeing.

Michael looks… well, horrified. His mouth halfway open, eyes wide, skin as pale as it can go. It looks like he’d been in the middle of getting a ready meal out of the fridge, which answers her question, she guesses.

But then there’s who (what?) he was talking to. Sasha’s not even sure that it's there, except why wouldn’t it be there? It looks like a mirror copy of Michael’s windbreaker, except that it’s clearly alive and moving in place as it turns it’s attention from the man standing by it to look at her. There’s nothing close to whatever it is that Sasha knows to even start comparing it to.

The impossible creature sitting on the counter _blinks_ at her, shifting colors in a wild twist. _“Oops.”_

“Oops?” Michael squeaks. He looks like he’s about to fall over.

Sasha’s suddenly glad for her time spent in Artefact Storage, because after the initial shock, she finds she’s… not actually that freaked out? Sure, there’s a something or a some _what_ on the counter, but so far all it’s done is look at her. There are things much more normal in Storage that have tried to kill her just for watching down a nearby stack.

 _“I didn’t realize the perimeter had tripped.”_ The creature says, before it suddenly blinks from the counter to the floor in front of her. It’s all neon-bright and rippling edges and shapes with a suggestion of an outline in chalk. _“Hmm, that’s not right. It_ didn’t _trip.”_

Michael is still staring at her, and his legs seem to have finally given out, because he sinks to the floor with his windbreaker catching on the edges of the cabinets and letting out a sad-sounding rustle. “Oh, God.” 

_“No. Just Sasha.”_ The creature blinks back to Michael’s side, clambering up onto his shoulders. 

“Ha, ha ha,” Michael’s voice is pitchy with nerves, “you can ah- you can see them too…?” As soon as he’s said it, he buries his face in his hands. “God, that was stupid.”

Sasha can’t help it; she laughs. This seems to catch the attention of the creature back to her again. She has the weirdest feeling that they’re excited by the response.

“So, what _are_ they?” Sasha makes sure Michael’s moved his hands enough to see her before she crosses the breakroom to stand near the sink. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

 _“There isn’t anything like me_ but _me.”_ The creature says, still ringing with delight. 

“Helpful answers only, thank you.” Michael lowers his hands and gestures to the creature perched on his shoulders, and then to Sasha. “Sasha, this is the Distortion. They’re… complicated.”

 _“We already know you.”_ The Distortion goes through another swirl of color, and she realizes she can suddenly make out curled, refracting eyes. Or at least, the impression of them.

“Well, nice to meet you.” Sasha says.

“You aren’t freaked out by this?”

“Should I be?” Sasha glances up at Michael. He seems… genuinely baffled by her lack of running out of the breakroom. And maybe a little concerned by it? “I mean, we’ve _all_ seen worse. I worked in Storage, you know.”

Michael guffaws at her. The Distortion chimes with amusement and extends a long fingered hand, which is unexpected. She’d assumed they’d have more of a paw-type situation, but then, considering all of the bright colors and the refusal to stay solid in one form long enough for her brain to properly assign them an origin or derivative point, that’s probably the point.

Their hand is heavy, disjointed like it’s full of blunt-edged river stones instead of anything resembling bones. But it’s better than if she’d squeezed down and found jelly.

“You are remarkably okay with this.” Michael says again. The anxiety seems to have mostly drained from him now, and the temperature isn’t as cold as when she first approached. “I screamed the first time I saw them.”

_“You were being ridiculous.”_

“ _You_ almost killed me trying to escape like a runaway house pet.” Michael immediately shoots back.

It’s fascinating, and implies that this isn’t any kind of recent development. There’s definitely a friendly, established rapport. 

Then something occurs to her. “Is this why you don’t like people coming down here?”

Michael looks surprised, but slowly nods. “Yeah. Archives are just a little bit… exciting like this.”

There’s a story there, she knows, because there’s a reason Michael has whatever variation on paranormal creature, and whatever story it is probably also includes why Michael doesn’t have any coworkers anymore.

But Sasha’s not going to ask. Not yet anyway. 

Besides, she has a _much_ more pressing inquiry.

“I originally came down to ask you if you wanted to get out of the Institute for lunch.” Sasha smiles. “Offer still stands, by the way.”

Michael blinks, and then gives her a small, soft smile. “Sure.”)

* * *

(And then, of course, two years later, Sasha gets the notice of impending transfer.

“Either,” Michael says with a look of disgust, “Elias is trying to threaten us, or he’s hoping that we’ll accept your presence as some sort of peace offering.”

 _“And either way, he’s a fool.”_ The Distortion growls, pressing up against Sasha’s neck. _“You are under our protection, Sasha._ Nothing _will get you. Least of all that spineless Eye.”_

“Aw, thanks, Tortie.” She scratches at their chin and their growl dies away into a contented, self-assured purr. “You too, Michael.” She smiles at him.

Michael’s ears go a bit pink, but his expression also softens. “Of course, Sasha. And they’re right: nothing outside the Institute will try anything if it knows what’s good for it. You’re, ah, marked by the Spiral, now. At least by this part of it.” 

“Well, I’m grateful.” Sasha nods. It is reassuring, honestly: she knows there are multiple encounters that they’ve had with other Avatars that have ended in the Distortion gaining respect. It’s probably the safest she could be, all things considered. “And I don’t think it was entirely Elias; I’m fairly sure Jon put me forwards. Elias just signed off.”

Michael hums, and then goes quiet. She can tell he’s working something over in his head. His expression has gone all pensive and taken on the quirks of anxiety that she associates with him. It makes him look several years younger, somehow, less like the mostly confident man she knows and more like he must have been when he was new to the Archives, years ago.

“Sasha, I’m sorry you have to go down knowing, well.” Michael gestures vaguely. “Everything that I’ve- we’ve- told you about.”

“Honestly, I feel better knowing it.” She says, honest.

Michael blinks, looking at her with surprise. “Really? I’d have thought- well.” He’s chewing at his lip. “Thought it’d inspire more panic that way.”

“Of course I do,” She answers, gently, “I mean… look where _not_ knowing gets people.”

He’s quiet for a minute. 

“Don’t terrorize Jon _too_ much, okay?” Sasha says. When neither of them speak, she stresses, “ _Okay?”_

“Hmm.” Michael makes a show of considering her request before he shrugs. “Alright.”

“Michael. C’mon, he’s going to be stressed out enough just from the move.” Sasha puts a hand on his shoulder and drops her tone a little to mimic a sad advertisement. “Don’t you remember when you were new to the Archives, and didn’t know really what you were doing or why, and anxious of messing it all up because there was someone there who would know…?”

Michael gives her an amused look but sighs. The Distortion, clearly delighted by her seamless effort to guide-trip their host, giggles. “Fine, I will _not_ make things hard for Jon. At least, in as much as I can without endangering the delicate balance of the Archival ecosystem.”

“I’ll take that.” Sasha nods.)

* * *

Sasha considers what to do after she makes the trip back to her flat. She doesn’t have plans, tonight; she and Tim are planning to have dinner tomorrow night, and then Friday is their next attempt at getting everyone from the office to go out as a group after work.

She makes her decision about halfway home, as she idly glances into shop windows on the walk home.

An hour or so after leaving the Magnus Institute's lovely little hell basement masquerading as a set of archival rooms, and after she changes into something more comfortable, Sasha heads back out. 

Michael lives several stops away from Sasha on the tub, just far enough that she doesn’t feel comfortable walking there, especially not with evening starting to fall. She pops in her earbuds and settles in for the trip to Michael’s.

As long as Sasha’s known him, Michael has had two flatmates: there’s the Distortion, who shares a body with him, and then there’s his actual _human_ flatmate.

Gerard Kaey is, in some ways, probably as unlikely a candidate for “Michael’s best friend” as the Distortion themself is. Generally, you don’t expect to find people who dress the way Michael does hanging about with someone who dresses as goth as Gerry. 

Michael is all bright colors (even discounting the Distortion’s atrocious taste influence) and color-block patterns and generally soft lines and has, as Tim had so accurately described it, dandelion hair.

Gerry, on the other hand, has dyed black hair with only a slight wave, with coppery-red roots always peeking out from his hairline. His own daily outerwear is a long, black trench that shows the years of wear it’s seen in the leather. 

If the Distortion’s version of events are to be trusted, it would also probably come as a surprise to most people that Michael had basically told Gerry that he was going to be moving in with them, and that Gerry had just accepted that as fact.

But then, none of them are “most people”. Even Sasha, who’s personal experience with things outside of the normal scope of human experience is mostly limited to her experience in Artefact Storage and the occasional Leitner heist or her friendship with Michael and the Distortion (and by extension, her friendship with Michaels two Avatar friends), has more experience with this sort of thing than most people will ever have.

Gerry is also an interesting man in his original occupation, which was less an occupation and more the acting out of a personal vendetta: hunting down and destroying Leitner’s collection. 

It’s something he still goes out and does, whenever a book pops up close enough to take a half week off to chase it, but… it’s something that he seems to have moved past, just a bit. Sasha’s not sure how, or why, but she knows Michael and the Distortion infinitely prefer the occasional trips to hunt cursed books to a lifestyle of _only_ hunting them.

The part of town that the building that they live in is the sort of area that you really can pass by plenty of times without ever really seeing. It has that air to it of a local place, out of the way of travelers and tourists, where only people who know exactly where they are can be seen about. It’s quiet.

Which makes it the perfect place for the Distortions pet architecture project. She never has been able to get a straight answer from them about how, exactly, they produced an entire building. She knows, of course, that technically speaking the Distortion themself is an architecture project. While they have no true body, the closest thing is the small closed off pocket of folding and unfolding space that makes up their hallways.

Sasha has never seen that place; she knows better than to want to. The only things that see the corridor are the Distortion’s meals, and the Distortion themself. Maybe Michael, on nights where the Distortion wants interior decorating tips.

But regardless, they used the locale to their advantage. The building looks like it’s always been there, aged in the right aways and with plenty of apparent wear.

The bottom floor is the small bookshop that Gerry runs when he isn’t away on one of his trips. It has a large front window with awnings and carved woodwork that hides the marks that ward off enemy Avatars. There’s three of them inlain over the entry, though Sasha can’t manage to pick them out from the surrounding patterns anytime she tries.

The flat above the eloquently nicknamed “Normal Fucking Books” (which simply reads “Books” on the actual sign) is always somewhere between comfortably lived in and an active fire hazard. Of course, whenever Sasha points this out, Gerry looks oddly pleased, and Michael cheerfully reminds her of the fire extinguishers stashed in every possible nook.

The extinguishers have been there as long as she’s known Michael. Presumably because Gerry has a habit of burning Leitners in the main room when they’re safe enough to bring home for disposal. 

It’s a fairly decent sized flat, even with the amount of stuff they’ve crammed into it, with a living area right off the landing, a kitchen off to one side, and a couple of bedrooms. The kitchen gets pretty cramped with more than two people- or when anyone and Michael are in it- but there’s plenty of space to do things like eat out in the living room. Or in desperate situations, downstairs with the bookshelves pushed to the edges of the shop.

Sasha usually finds herself here once a week, whether by invitation or just because she doesn’t have anything else to do. It’s not a bad place to be, once you navigate around the clutter and the things labelled with sticky notes that say “DO NOT TOUCH- PROBABLY CURSED”. 

The door may be locked, but as soon as Sasha steps under the stoop, the lock clicks audibly.

Tonight, she heads up the stairs, glancing around the empty downstairs shop curiously as she goes, and plops herself onto the couch by the landing after she enters. There’s a windbreaker laying on the cushion next to her, and Sasha can hear the shower running in one of the bathrooms. 

“Hey, Tortie.” She reaches out and lets her hand hover a few inches above the windbreaker, skin tickling with the static prickling in the air above it. 

After a moment, the impressions of rumpled fabric shift, and the Distortion yawns at her, before rubbing up against her hand. Today their shifting fractals are patterns in blue and green, blunted edges warm under her fingers as she scratches at what her mind tells her is their back.

 _“Sasha_.” Their voice is melodic as they greet her, tapering off into a layered, chiming sound like a purr.

She sits there, idly scrolling on her phone and replying to a text from Tim, petting the strange eldritch fear creature that's purring at her. 

All things considered, she should probably have some sort of reaction to thinking about where she's come to in her life, that this is normal and even a _good_ sort of normal. But Sasha doesn't care- and unlike other supernatural weirdness she's encountered working for the Institute (namely Lietner's horrible collection that seems to rear its ugly head every few years despite Gerry- and Jon’s- best efforts), the Distortion is pretty tame. 

Sure, they're siphoning fear off their big boss, and if the suspicion she has about the man who harassed her and mysteriously didn't turn up to his job in Storage the day after she mentioned it to Michael is correct, they've probably also eaten people with their trick doors. But Sasha doesn't care much for Elias, or for the man who suddenly "resigned" either.

The Distortion has to eat too, after all. 

Michael joins her after about twenty minutes, hair still dripping a bit onto the floor and shirtless, revealing the few swirls of color that the Distortion has scribbled onto the skin of his stomach. “Oh, Sasha- sorry, I didn’t realize you’d already gotten here.”

“Don’t worry about it- Tortie’s keeping me company.” She smiles and the Distortion blinks open a kaleidoscope eye to consider Michael before they shift off the couch to drape across his shoulders. 

"Hey, you." Michael says to them, before he jerks his chin towards the kitchen. “I need to dry off, but we’ve got takeaway in the fridge if you want to go ahead and get some food.”

“What kind?” She stands and heads for the kitchen, careful to not bump into Michael as he heads for his room.

“Should be some chicken- there’s a carton of lo mien in there too.” He calls, before Sasha hears the click of his door shutting.

She finds the takeaway containers in the fridge, and pulls down a pair of plates. She hadn’t seen Gerry when she came in, so she figures she probably doesn’t need to make him a plate. He’s probably out somewhere.

Michael comes back a couple minutes later, changed into lounge pants and a faded t-shirt with a cracking decal from an old nineties cartoon. His hair is dry, and the Distortion comes skittering along after him on the floor.

Dinner is a quick affair, with them fighting for a minute over who got to use the microwave first before Sasha claimed it and the Distortion did… something to Michael’s to make it warm.

Now, they’re back on the couch, starting up a show. 

"So where is Gerry tonight?" She asks, leaning back against the couch as the nature show’s intro plays on the tv screen.

"Oh- out utilizing the services of our local motorcyclist. He got a hit on a Vast Leitner a couple weeks ago, so they went to get it." Michael presses his shoulder up against hers and settles deeper into the couch cushions. “I think he said they were planning to get back in the morning. Y’know, provided they don’t run into trouble. Which, considering…”

Sasha laughs. "Taking the Vast expert along? Smart. And I suppose it would take less time if you used the Vast to your advantage." 

"Gerry's definitely braver than I am- the way that man drives terrifies me, and I already don't really like motorcycles." Michael shudders. "He only knows two speeds _: fast_ and _even faster._ And that's not even counting the cliff jumping shortcuts." 

"Lord, I forgot he did that."

"I'm _never_ going to forget. I still have nightmares." Michael shudders, but he's grinning, which means it's mostly for show. "You're my only sensible friend, Sasha; you're the only one who hasn't gone anywhere with him." 

"Well…”

 _"Sasha!"_ He gasps in mock indignation. 

“I’m kidding!” She laughs and lightly pushes at him. “I know better than to accept an offer. Besides, where would I even go? You know me; I like to stick to the same old places and the same old routines.”

Michael nods, sagely, and says in a composed tone, “Wise words. And just as well too.” 

They manage to keep the stiff, professional atmosphere for about half a minute before they’re both giggling. The Distortion, still languidly draped over Michael’s bare shoulders, is watching them with amusement.

“Well, I hope they find it and get back alright.” Sasha wipes tears from the corners of her eyes.

“Sure they will.” Michael agrees, pressing a little closer as he relaxes again. “Or we’ll be finding out how long Vast Avatars digest for.”

 _“I estimate a while.”_ The Distortion says.

* * *

An hour goes by, and they’ve moved on to the next show of their little nature program.

Michael is leaning up against her, head resting against hers, though he's liable to get a sore neck from the difference in their heights. His legs are pulled up onto the couch beside him, folded so that he isn’t entirely splayed uncomfortably in the air.

The Distortion is doing what they do best: using their lack of adherence to proper laws of biology and physics to stretch out over both of them. 

Half of their physical manifestation of a body is up on Michael's shoulders, draping over them like an uneven scarf. Their edges are like looking at the shifting patterns of light hitting the ground through a suncatcher. She knows that if she was to lift her free hand, the air around them would be warm.

The rest of their body is twisted in a thin coil down over Michael's that widens out again when it reaches Sasha's lap. They've got one stretched out arm curled beneath them, and the other stretching down to the floor by her feet. Their head is on her far thigh, and the Distortion is contentedly purring as she scratches at the rough area that may be their neck. 

They’re politely maintaining a constant weight, gentle and without the pressure that Sasha knows they tend to apply to Michael. She’s grateful for that; as much as she appreciates having Michael’s slight bulk against her side, the sort of weight that he appreciates makes her feel claustrophobic. Even the arm curled under the Distortion’s body is lighter than it would be to anyone else.

“If that penguin dies, I will cry.” Michael murmurs, shifting a little and making a contented noise when Sasha adjusts her arm around his shoulders. His hair is down and impossibly soft where it spills and cascades behind him.

“I know.” She agrees. “It would be so sad.”

 _“We’ve seen this before.”_ The Distortion rumbles, somewhere between bemused and slightly annoyed with the two humans for talking during the show. _“It will live.”_

“Could be different this time.” Michael insists. The Distortion makes an indifferent noise, which probably means they’re aware that it could be, but they aren’t going to do anything about it.

(Sometimes, the Distortion _does_ like to fiddle with the shows and movies they’ve sat through before.. That’s why Sasha had been so confused the third time they played _While You Were Sleeping_ and the plot suddenly changed.

But they’d never do it during a nature documentary, and definitely not if the end result was turning Michael into a blubbering mess. The Distortion _hates_ when Michael cries.)

The three lapse into comfortable quiet as the documentary keeps playing.

* * *

"Can I walk you home?" Michael gives her a lopsided grin.

“So chivalrous this evening.” Sasha laughs, but she gives Michael a grateful smile. “That would be wonderful, actually.”

The door that usually stands at the top of the stairs isn't always this bright of a yellow, and when Michael turns the brass knob, it leads out into Sasha's front room.

"Thank you, Michael." She smiles and steps through, turning to wave at the Distortion still perched on the couch. They shift colors, which is their idea of an acknowledging blink."Have a good night, you two. Tell Gerry he owes me a coffee since he wasn’t home tonight."

"I will!" Michael waves. "See you in the morning, Sasha." 

The door closes, and Sasha checks that her front door is locked before she yawns and heads for bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i know i said last author's note we'd meet a new face this chapter... the way this ended up wanting to be written that didn't happen, BUT surprise surprise now we know who the mysterious flatmate with the books is! c;
> 
> also oooo, we have three marks on the door and we now know michael has other avatar friends... i wonder who they are... vote on your phones now 
> 
> next chapter: worms & the promise of worktrips
> 
> chapter title from "tongue & stutter" by i the victor!


	5. feel like the world expected someone else  // jon; mid 2014

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon's nearly forgotten to be looking for the sixth occupant of the Archives, until a seemingly normal encounter outside the Institute turns into another sighting.
> 
> Or: outdoor and indoor worms, and the inherent threat of being told about an upcoming work event.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey all! just wanted to clarify, that while there are brief worms in this chapter, they will not be of a canon-typical nature in anything other than being weird, because this is the only time they'll be appearing!

They’ve somehow, and Jon will never be able to explain _how_ or even _when_ , managed to wrangle the Archives into something bordering manageable. There’s still a terrifying ocean of backlog to work through, and the occasional vanishing statement, but that’s alright. Now the Archives are just one more project they’ve all been assigned to, not a horrifying new frontier.

It’s the sort of routine that Jon craves- needs, really, to get anything done. It’s much easier to settle into things now that even the disorder of the Archives is just the way things are. The fear of getting caught unawares by something and it showing to everyone around him has dampened. 

It also makes it easier to trust that, even if the quality of work or the speed it’s done varies a bit, he doesn’t need to spend as much time watching his assistants. Particularly since they have someone to ask about things when Jon is too wrapped up in whatever he’s working on to notice when they try to ask a question.

He still finds himself spending more time out in the bullpen than he used to spend away from his desk in Research. 

Jon doesn’t want to admit it to himself, but he knows that he’s starting to feel actually comfortable with them. It’s different, somehow, than it was in Research; a strange different that prickles on occasion. 

He realizes that maybe, _maybe_ , it’s because he’s slowly letting himself consider letting all of them (not just Tim) in.

Just a little.

* * *

Getting too close to Michael is… strange. There’s an energy- an _actual_ energy around him, It’s almost like what Jon imagines it must feel to be around _Mike Crew_ , the man he has scavenged bits and pieces from statements whatever’s stealing the statements hasn't yet hidden (another name that seems to incite more active acts of theft), but this is only a strange, fuzzy sense of static. 

He’s never actually gotten shocked from being around Michael, but it almost feels… sharp when you get too close. Like there’s something defensive and possessive just hovering in the air around him.

An unfriendly disposition made manifest, except Michael is everything _but_ unfriendly. Honestly, he’s worse than Martin is, with his cheerful, easy, if sometimes baffling efforts at conversation and frequent chuckling. 

But that’s not so abnormal, not really, in the Institute. 

It just turns into another thing that Jon considers and then elects to ignore, at least for the moment.

* * *

Jon’s not forgotten the mysterious, likely thieving creature, but he hasn’t seen it again. That is, until the worms start turning up.

At first, it seemed completely innocuous, just some strange worm, probably turned white and silvery from bloating in a rain puddle, squirming weakly on the sidewalk. And then there’s another a few yards on, but two worms isn’t cause for alarm is it? Worms crawl out onto the pavement and die in all sorts of ways during and after a rainstorm. 

Sure, they remind Jon a little too much of the statement he'd read about Jane Prentiss (which if he’s honest with himself, he’s a little cross that one hadn’t been one of the ones to go missing), but that's just how anything looks after you read disarming testimony.

Except for the face Michael makes when he mentions it to him.

Jon usually tries to offer up some small bit of casual chatter to Michael when he comes in- it seems to improve the general mood, and even if Jon finds it a bit beyond him, it's worth it to keep the man entertained. He _does_ sit directly next to Jon’s door.

So when Jon mentions the worm, he's expecting some reply like "didn't know bugs scared you" or "pretty decent rain will do that". Or maybe even an anecdote, or just a nod of acknowledgment. It’s hard to predict what kind of mood the senior assistant will be in on any given day, despite always keeping that same aura of cheer.

He's not expecting all the friendliness in Michael's expression to shutter off and vanish behind a dark curtain, or to hear the sudden, tinny growl at the edge of what his ears can hear. The impression of the thing that sleeps curled in Michael’s hood has sat up, and is bristling with little highlighter bolts coming off of it’s form.

Michael gives Jon an intense look, lip curling. “Where did you see silver worms?”

“Ah- out on the sidewalk. It has been raining, after all.” Jon finds himself offering the explanation not to simply get out of the conversation, but to try and soothe whatever reaction this news has called up.

Michael looks towards the door, eyes narrowing. There’s an uncomfortable silence that takes over the bullpen, the faint echoes of the others in the break room seemly swallowed by the thick air. 

“I think I’ll be taking my break now.” Michael finally says, but he doesn’t look back at Jon, focused on the door.

Jon flees back to his office, and watching through the frosted glass window he sees Michael abandon his desk and disappear into the blurred gloom of the far end of the bullpen.

* * *

A few minutes later, when he sneaks outside to see if the worms really _are_ strange, he catches Michael out on the sidewalk, windbreaker-less, with an impossibly neon bright creature darting around on the concrete. 

Jon doesn't need to get closer to immediately know that whatever it is, whatever it's _doing_ , it's killing the worms. The little bits of silver that crackle and pop as it jumps around the puddles is enough. There are more than when Jon had been outside, but it’s less than a minute before there are no longer any.

He ducks back down into the Archives.

* * *

So. 

That was a thing that happened.

Jon absolutely hasn’t asked Michael about it. He isn’t _going_ to ask Michael about it, actually. He’s even indefinitely delaying the still as-of-yet-not-had conversation about managerial changeover and such.

But he does scribble down his collected musings and observations onto a sticky note to keep in his pocket.

_thing is definitely there_

_does Michael_ know _that it’s there?_

_never seen him acknowledge it, not really_

_definitely the thing stealing the statements_

_is it also the source of the impression michael gives?_

Jon hesitates for a moment before scribbling the word _Leitner?_ down. 

He looks at his note for a moment, before scowling and crumbing it up. Now he’s just being properly ridiculous. The thing may be there, but thus far all it’s done is nab the occasional statement and chase worms on the pavement. He’s not going to turn his senior assistant into a _project_.

(And, it _isn’t_ a spider.)

… But he will keep a bit more of an eye on him, for his own sake.

He shoves the note into his bag.

  
  


* * *

“Is this jar full of gummy worms?” Tim asks, rolling his chair over by Michael’s desk.

Michael seems to startle a little, and glances up from his phone. “Hmm- oh, right. Those.”

“Willing to share?” Tim raises an eyebrow. 

Michael pops the top off of the jar and pushes them towards him.

* * *

“I’m sending you and your team on a little excursion, Jon.” Elias is saying.

Elias had called Jon up to his office an hour ago, a summons that made Jon equally curious and nervous. Whenever Elias wants something, he emails and asks Jon to come up to his office for a meeting, never in reverse. Jon’s not sure if he ought to be expecting a performance review or something more mundane.

It has occurred to Jon at some point over the last few weeks that Elias never actually comes _down_ to the Archives. Elias pretty much always seems to stick to his office, but it’s a little strange that he doesn't even seem to care to check in on them. Jon had been expecting at least one unprompted and unannounced visit, if only to throw everyone off for Elias’ own amusement.

But he hasn’t. He’s not sure what to make of that.

Jon finally registers what Elias has actually told him. “I’m sorry, an excursion…?”

“I imagine you haven’t had much time for field work since you assumed the new position.” Elias patiently says. “So I thought I might arrange something. There will be supplements from Research and Storage, of course; this bit of checking will seem rather mundane, really, but it will be beneficial to the overall coordination of the Institute.”

“But, all of us?” Jon can’t imagine anything he’d need all _four_ of them for. Unless Elias is actually aiming to nudge them along into some sort of team building exercise guised as a chance to dig into something. Which… considering the mention of Research and Storage, who _are_ often sent to that sort of thing...

“Well, I rather think that the Institute can afford it, can’t we?” Elias was smiling like you might at a child: indulgent, and with an edge of condescension that made Jon bristle. But he couldn’t let that show. “After all, the Archives has had remarkably low travel expenses for the last few years; I know you’ve checked the records.”

It’s said like a joke, but Jon has the feeling Elias intends it as some sort of strange, half-obscured compliment on his checking the Archival staff records.

“Remember to let your team know they’ll be able to leave early for the weekend to pack, Jon.” Elias smiles, and waves a hand to dismiss him.

Jon shuts the door softly behind him, and stands there for a second before he flees back down the hall to the stairs. It’s a quiet retreat, because he doesn’t want to find out what happens if he breaks the silence sanctity of the hallway, but it is hasty.

He’s going to have to _travel_. With his assistants. With _Michael_. 

Jon groans and rubs at his eyes. He doesn’t like to travel under regular circumstances. Researching was alright, but he can already guess at what sort of antics his assistant will all be capable of outside of work. 

But it _will_ also give Jon a chance to get to actually see Michael outside of the Archives. Maybe he can get a better idea of what’s going on with him.

Or at least, settle his mind about the thing in his windbreaker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the slight delay on this chapter! i had a... minor depressive episode last week and didn't realize what was going on until like, saturday, so i didn't get a whole lot written (also hence why this chapter is much shorter than the others). just one of those things that happens sometimes y'know? so apologies for that, and don't worry about me as i'm alright and on the upswing again! 
> 
> shoutout to my discord status that has been "the distortion be like [eats gummy worms as a threat display]" for five days now because of this chapter.
> 
> you also may notice this getting marked as a series sometime in the near future: there are going to be a few one-off scenes for this fic from for other character POVs. because i refuse to have more than four in the main fic pffff. the first of this will be for a scene from the work trip! 
> 
> next chapter: back in time again for first meetings, and acquiring a second new roommate.
> 
> chapter title from "someone else" by the jellyrox!


	6. a strange set of circumstances // michael; early 2012

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Distortion wants to move, for some reason. Michael's fairly sure that can't lead to anything good... but he's been wrong about their ideas before. Occasionally. Once. 
> 
> Or: the care and keeping of your human, more threats against your boss, and the phenomena known as "this may as well happen"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: brief depictions of grief

_ We should move _ , the Distortion tells him one morning, when he’s in the middle of making his morning tea and yawning. It’s decaffeinated earl grey, today. If he’s being honest, though, it’s almost always earl grey. He only uses his other teas when he’s out of it and doesn’t have the energy to go to Tesco for more.

Always decaffeinated, though. His body already tended to throw fits about caffeine (swinging between no noticeable effect to painful indigestion) before he’d gotten his prescriptions. Now, if he took anything with full caffeine, he didn’t sleep, aid or not. 

“I thought you liked this flat.” Michael rubs at his eyes after he unceremoniously drops the half carton of milk onto the counter by the honey jar, and the Distortion laughs at him.

_ Not as much as we might like other flats! _

“You’re just bored, then?” Michael shakes his head. “We can’t just  _ move _ , I’d have to finish my lease and find a new one and adjust the budget and… oh. Right.” 

The Distortion laughs again.  _ You have forgotten I don’t need to follow your rules. _ It should be illegal for them to be this awake and amused this early in the morning. Michael barely feels like a person. Maybe that’s why they’re awake: they aren’t one.

“Forgive me, oh great one.” Michael rolls his eyes and pulls the tea bag from his mug. He watches the tea go light and very milky and then spoons in the honey. He’s found that he tends to use more sugar since the Distortion became a feature of his digestive system. 

There’s probably some kind of thesis in there, somewhere, about energy cravings and how the Distortion interacts with his meds and his brain, but it’s seven in the morning on a weekday and Michael isn’t a science person anyway.

_ I think it would be good for you, too. _ They tell him.  _ This one is…  _ He can almost hear them thinking, straining for an explanation that would make sense, or be willing to be cleaved off their consciousness for his.

Michael downs about a third of his over-sized camping tin cup before he says, “Boring?”

_ Exactly! _ The Distortion chirps, relaxing again. 

“I’ll think about it.” Michael glances around the visible parts of his flat. “But for now, tea.”

* * *

It’s not a terrible surprise when the Distortion’s research habits change to real estate in London and common living arrangements. Michael watches with amusement as they start watching more home and garden than the nature documentaries they usually favor.

“Y’know, it’s actually pretty funny that you’re my first actual flatmate.” Michael says, frowning down at the mail he’s holding. 

_ You’ve lived with other people before, _ the Distortion’s attention slides onto him with a faint crackle in his ears, _ what makes that not count? _

“Generally living with your family isn’t considered the same as living with people you aren’t related to. And you’ve got your little claws in my memories, so you should already know exactly how that went.” Michael shrugs, tossing the usual assortment of junk mail into the bin. “And I never went to uni, which is usually when people start having proper flatmates.”

The Distortion seems to consider this.  _ Would you want a proper one when we move? _

“Already got you.” Michael flops himself down onto the couch and prods at one of the Distortion’s fuzzy limbs. “Not sure I can work a second one in.”

* * *

Michael is in the library when he first runs into Gerard Keay. He’s looking for something related tangentially to a statement he’s been working on: the sort of thing that isn’t entirely relevant, but that sounds interesting enough to look into. 

He’s not strictly doing things anymore to fulfill job requirements or quota. It’s more of a way to irritate Gertrude with his presence and the presence of the Distortion, and by extension Elias, and the Eye itself. Nothing he finishes working on ends up going to the Archivist’s desk anyway. He just files the finished files away in document storage wherever the whim strikes him. 

It’s not even Gertrude’s mismanagement anymore, it’s Michael and the Distortion’s. There’s a pleasant sort of satisfaction in that. No one’s tried to stop him yet, although he knows it’s an annoyance. That’s why he’s doing it.

So they’re on the search for something that the Distortion thinks is going to lead them to a connection with the Dark, and that Michael hopes will just lead to an interesting afternoon’s reading either way, when Michael gets distracted by someone else in the stacks. 

It’s not entirely unusual to run into someone in the library. There’s always the librarians, and usually a few members of the research department, and then outside and student researchers. Michael knows the regular faces, because of the amount of time he’s spent here (although all but one of the library staff he’d trained with a decade ago have gone the normal, not-spooky retirement route), but sometimes he’ll encounter someone new.

That’s the case now.

The man who’s looking at the spines on the shelves down the row of stacks from Michael is the most goth man he’s seen in his entire life. His long hair is dyed black, except for it’s red roots, and he’s wearing what looks like a leather trench coat. All in all, it's very goth. He can respect that.

The eye tattoos would probably startle Michael more if he wasn’t already used to seeing (and usually destroying or letting the Distortion warp) a lot of eyes. Given, one might note if they looked around for more than a minute, the absolutely unnecessary amount of them in the Institute.

Temple to the Eye, sure, but there was a level of  _ excessive _ whoever built the place (Magnus, he supposes) liked. The Distortion knew when to stop adding spirals to things.

Michael shakes the thought away.

And realizes he’s probably been in his head for about thirty seconds too long and the man is looking at him. Michael gives a caught-out grin. “Hello.”

He doesn’t seem too impressed by that, but Michael’s not too worried. For one thing, he has a suspicion that might just be his resting expression. 

“I’m Michael Shelley, I work down in the Archives.” He tilts his head. “Are you a student? I can probably help you find something if you need it.” 

“Gerard. Gerard Kaey.” Gerard says. “And no, more of a visiting researcher.” 

That’s a lie, somehow, Michael realizes. He doesn’t know which part, but some part of it. He’s not going to ask, and honestly, if it’s the researcher part, he doesn’t care. Maybe he’ll steal something- that would definitely upset Elias.

Gerard seems to mull something over, giving him an assessing look. “Actually, I could use a hand with finding something. Know where this is.” He flashes a scribbled name on a notecard at him.

“Oh, yeah, that’ll be on the other side of the library, actually.” Michael feels a bit of the nervous tension bleed out from his grin. “I can show you. Reach it, too; that’s probably on the top shelf.” 

The book is where he expected it to be, and he hands it over with a flourish. After that, he goes back to his own search.

* * *

That’s not the first time he spots Gerard Kaey in the Institute library. It happens a couple more times over the week, when Michael takes what he’d borrowed back up, and then on an excursion he didn’t necessarily need but had been curious to see if the man was still hanging around.

It sort-of seems like Gerard has the same idea about Michael. Every time he’s managed to find what he thinks is a rather discreet spot to look, Gerard is already looking back at him. 

It’s a little puzzling, if Michael’s honest. He’s used to the occasional look: he is, after all, ridiculously tall, has a lot of hair, and then there’s the Distortion-Chic color palette. But usually, that stops after the first couple looks, or after Michael’s introduced himself.

They’ve talked a couple more times too, mostly just small talk and the usual sort of conversation Michael finds himself in when he talks to anyone in the Library. Gerard had asked Michael to get something down for him too, one day. 

He always seemed to be watching him with that curious, assessing look, though.

This attention is… probably the most he’s gotten from someone who he didn’t already know in several years now. Definitely in the last year. Which says rather depressing things about his non-existent social life.

(What was he going to do after Sannikova? Go out more often? He was perfectly fine just staying home after he left the Institute, most nights.)

The Distortion hums at him, shifting their weight around in the hood of his jacket, and flickers the block pattern on it around before settling again.  _ I think… I think that he can see us. _

Michael freezes, the cursor on his screen flashing as his fingers halt over the keys. “Excuse me?”

_ You saw the tattoos. _ They sound more subdued than usual, which he figures is to be expected when they’re concerned about having been seen. As a general rule, the only people that can see them (that they  _ let _ see them) are Avatars, and even then it’s usually meant as a threat. Well, always as a threat, really. Outside the Institute, they’ve only pointedly displayed once.

Michael shivers at the reminder of his encounter with Perry. 

Point is, they don’t exactly go around letting random visitors to the Institute's library see them. 

“So you think he’s with the Eye, then?” Michael supposes that would make sense. The Eye is all about knowing. But he hadn’t really thought there were many Eye-aligned people, well,  _ loose _ in London. Maybe elsewhere in the world, but he’d been under the impression anyone with enough aptitude to see things like the Distortion unprompted would already be under Bouchard’s control.

The Distortion seems to think the same.  _ No. That’s… _ Michael can feel them rooting around for the right word, a sensation that brings a noise like a revolving door to mind.  _ Not quite. Maybe never? Hard to tell.  _

“You’re losing me.” He frowns. Do they mean that Gerard is on the way to joining the Institute? Or that it’s some sort of disguise for something else. 

But then, if he was one of the Stranger’s chameleons, then the Distortion would be having a much more aggressive reaction. The last time they’d run across someone like that, Michael had had to quite literally drag them away before they got violent. And he has the impression neither Elias or Gertrude would stand for anyone like that being in the Institute. 

The Distortion makes a frustrated noise and suddenly reaches out a long blade-ended hand to swipe a folder off Michael’s desk. Michael watches it drop to the floor and then disintegrate in a shredded array of spiraling paper. 

“I’m sure it’s fine.” Michael finally decides. “He hasn’t tried to attack me- or you. It’ll be fine.”

The Distortion grumbles, but settles back down and lets their attempt to explain their theory go.

* * *

Michael catches himself glancing over towards the lesser used of the Archive’s storage rooms and sighs, closing his laptop and pushing himself out of his chair. 

He’s been doing it all morning, now, which means he can either keep sitting here and stewing about it, or he can just get it over with.

“It” being his usual monthly check of the abandoned boxes of personal effects. 

He glances towards Gertrude’s office before he unlocks the storage room door and ducks inside, shutting and locking it behind him. He’s not exactly worried about the Archivist coming in after him, especially since they haven’t actually interacted in more than passing glares for several months now, but this is still… something private. He wouldn’t want anyone else coming down and finding him in here either if someone from Research came down for something either.

He makes his way to the back of the room, stepping around a few boxes and piles of paper on the floor, until he finds the shelving unit shoved into one of the dimly lit corners. This is where things tend to go that are important, or used to be important, but that the Archivist doesn’t want to see. In that, it’s ironically the most well organized place in the Archives. 

Most of the contents of the lower shelves are messily placed bundles of statements, some without folders, some in tidier stacks, but all remnants of events that are too well remembered to warrant keeping with the rest. He’s fairly sure that if he cared or bothered to look, he would find some of the documents that had led up to certain events off the coast of Russia hidden away back here. 

The top shelf is lined with boxes about the size boots come packaged in from a clothing store, each with a little index card taped on and names written in ink as fading placards. Michael stares at them for a minute, breathing through his nose. 

The Distortion shifts somewhere, awareness sending a reverberation down the curling twist of their tangled up psyche. Their actual attention is elsewhere, but the brief reminder of their presence still is a little comfort. 

There’s only two names he actually knows, at least personally.  _ Sarah Carpenter _ and  _ Fiona Law. _

(If there’s one thing he and Gertrude can agree on, and it is really  _ one thing only _ , it’s that there isn’t a box for Emma.)

He hadn’t packed Fiona’s box, when she’d stopped coming in, but he’d hovered over Sarah as she did it. She’d told him a few stories from back when she and Fiona had been younger as she packed away little bits and ends from the desk. It’d been his first experience with someone from the Archives seemingly vanishing, but it hadn’t really registered as weird then.

He  _ had _ done Sarah’s. The memories threatened to bring fresh tears to his eyes and he sniffed pointedly at the dust.

Emma hadn’t bothered to offer any help, and now he’s grateful for that. At the time, he’d really been rather angry with her. He hadn’t understood how she could just sit there and not even say anything. 

They’d never really gotten on. It had been unsettling to him then, still determined to do whatever he could to either convince people he was useful, or to at least ignore him in a neutral way. She hadn’t even been neutral about it, tended to be prickly and push at him in ways that he was always upset by and didn’t understand  _ how _ she knew where he was vulnerable.

Of course, turns out Emma had something to do with the Web. The Distortion had been rather cross when Michael’d informed them that no, they couldn’t go hunting her for sport, because she had gone while they were still getting over their introductory spats. 

Sarah had hurt a lot more. Fiona he hadn’t known very well; she hadn’t been called a senior assistant, but she was the most experienced out of their team and Michael’s more direct supervisor as a result. He’d thought of her more as Ms. Law than Fiona.

But Sarah had been his  _ friend _ . She’d helped him with a lot of the legal things he’d had to sort out as a barely twenty year-old in a city he hadn’t grown up in and no contact with his family. He’d spent a lot of time around her flat when he hadn’t want to go home and be alone. 

(She’d been the one to sign as a non-relative for him on some of the most important paperwork of his life.)

Michael glances down the row at the other names, and frowns when his gaze catches on one. He’s never actually gone through any of the boxes from before his time, although he had passing knowledge of one or two names. Sarah and Fiona had worked in the Archives for much longer than he had, and while they didn’t often like to mention former coworkers, Sarah had sometimes told him stories and anecdotes. 

Which, that’s probably why he recognizes the nearest box to theirs. 

The Distortion is still doing whatever it is they like to do during the afternoons (Michael thinks it’s just more interior decoration of their weird stomach-hallway-body-place-thing), and it isn’t like he has anything better to be doing, so he figures he can indulge his curiosity a bit and pulls it down.

The little card on the box is in a different handwriting than the two Michael is familiar with, but it isn’t Gertrude’s- maybe Fiona had done it? He can’t remember what hers looked like. It strikes him as a little odd that someone who’d actually quit, and who everyone  _ known _ had quit would have a box like the rest in here. Maybe it was just a funny joke about never getting all his things?

There’s not much in the box, once Michael gets the dust-laden cover off. Just some papers, some odds and ends you’d expect to tip out of a desk drawer, a bag that contains… something that he doesn’t want to call ash, and a frame with something in it.

Michael frowns at the photograph. Even with his questionable ability to recognize people, there’s still something… familiar about his face. Which is odd, considering that he’d never met him, and Michael doesn’t really know many people with red hair either.

Except-

Michael prods at the Distortion’s consciousness, gaining their pricking attention. “Hey, does this look…” He shifts his grip on the photo to cover the hair with his thumb. “Does this look like Gerard to you?”

He can hear them buzzing as they think, rippling over his shoulders as they study the image. The Distortion is better at pattern recognition, but they’ve seen a  _ lot _ of patterns, so he patiently waits for their input.

_ It does. _ They finally agree. They don’t sound thrilled by it.

Michael had never met Delano, but Sarah had remembered him. She’d been new herself when he was still around. She’d told Michael a little about him. He’d been nice, she’d said. He’d quit to take care of his son.

Young son. Gerard looks about Michael’s age. And he’s been hanging around the Institute. Michael would’ve assumed anyone who managed to get out of this basement with their life would keep their kids out of it.

But. There’s a Delano box. There are only boxes down here for people who are, well  _ dead _ . Full of things Gertrude doesn’t want to think about or see. 

Michael has a very  _ bad _ feeling about how long Delano lasted outside of the Institute.

The Distortion growls.

* * *

And that’s what leads Michael to slamming open the Archivist’s door about two hours later. 

“If you even  _ look _ at him, so help me, Gertrude, I will have the Distortion tear you to shreds.” Michael growls. 

She almost looks… surprised by the threat. Like she’s actually seeing Michael for the first time, since-

He throws that thought from his mind as hard as he can, imagining it crumbled into a little ball and  _ hurled _ away from him. From the way the Distortion suddenly shifts, cooing something soothing at the base of his skull, he thinks for a second that maybe he really  _ had _ thrown something. 

Sometimes the overlap and distance between what’s the Distortion’s being and what Michael should be able to do as a human… warps a little. But this isn’t the time to worry about it. 

Gertrude doesn’t say anything, so Michael leaves. His point was made anyway. He doesn’t know  _ what _ the Archivist wants with Gerard Kaey, but she isn’t getting it. And if she thinks he’ll just look the other way because she hasn’t gone so far yet as to offer him a position in the Archives, she has another thing coming.

* * *

Michael realizes the Distortion’s gone about halfway through his lunch in the Archives breakroom later that week. It’s the distinctive lack of commentary on his human dietary choices that does it. 

He’s surprised he didn’t notice before, even considering that their range is slowly getting farther with time, but he’s too focused on the fact that  _ the Distortion has wandered off somewhere and Michael doesn’t have any idea what they’re doing _ . 

Michael is just about to go tearing up the stairwell to the Institute's upper levels in a frantic bid to follow the loose tugging sensation that leads  _ wherever _ they’ve gone, when the weight of their presence suddenly sinks onto his shoulders.

_ I have informed Kaey he will be moving with us to our new flat. _ The Distortion chirps, sounding incredibly pleased with themself.  _ This means we can move! I have started the building, now you have a human companion like all my research has told me is healthy, and we can leave your stupid flat. Both problems solved! _

“You did  _ what?” _ He squeaks. He thinks his brain has ground to a halt- there’s too much in what the Distortion has told him to even begin processing it, so he hits on the main thing. “You were in the library, weren’t you? What the hell did you think you were doing?”

_ I politely notified him of his new dwelling arrangements. _ They intone, deeper than usual and bored, and drawn out for Michael’s benefit. 

“Oh, my god.” Michael covers his eyes. “You can’t just  _ tell _ someone that.”

_ On the contrary, I was rather sure that was how it works. _ The Distortion says, sounding rather affronted now.  _ You people move in with strangers all the time! Isn't that half the point of having a flatmate, anyway.  _

“It’s slightly different when  _ you’re _ involved.” Michael stresses. “This isn’t like going to uni and getting an assignment or putting out an email request!”   
  


They huff at him.

Michael decides he’s not going to show his face upstairs for at least a week. That’ll give this whole thing plenty of time to just turn into a weird anecdote he can laugh about later. 

Yeah. Good plan.

* * *

(The plan doesn’t go off. 

It’s definitely still funny, years later. Gerry gives him absolute hell over it, and the Distortion still insists they had the right idea all along.

Michael’s willing to deal with the embarrassment because he loves them both.

And it  _ is _ funny, after all.)

* * *

Michael’s at the cafe he likes to stop by, usually on his way to work. Today though he’s here at lunch, and definitely not still hiding from the Distortion’s decisions.

Gerard slides into the chair across from him, coat folding under him as he sits. “I’ve thought about your friend’s offer.”

Michael’s not going to ask  _ how _ he knew where to find him. He has the impression it's sort of what he does. He can feel the Distortion rising up to the surface and shifting somewhere behind his hair; not quite all the way there, but curious and likely ready to defend themself if needed.

“You’re an interesting duo, you know.” Gerard drops Michael’s gaze, eyes wandering to where Michael knows the Distortion’s keeping themself invisible to other patrons. That pretty much confirms their theory that Gerard can see them. “Not marked, but not an Avatar. I’d have said manifestation, except you’re still human. And I’ve never seen a Leitner do anything like this.”

Well, that answered several questions about how much he knew about the world that lurked behind most of the Institute's collection.

“It was a ritual, actually.” Michael cautiously says. That’s probably a safe thing to tell him.

“Really. Huh.” Gerard looks surprised by that, before he shakes it off. There’s a slightly tense minute before he speaks again.“So yeah, sure. Invitation accepted”

The Distortion is crowing, somewhere, pleased to be right and even more pleased at hearing the word  _ not _ used to describe their state of being. Michael’s definitely going to endure a series of  _ I told you so _ for the rest of the week. 

“Can I ask… why?” Michael manages to ask past his surprise. “I mean- … yeah. Why?”

Gerard shrugs. “Better than going home.”

“Right.” Michael squints. He knows something about that, if he’s honest. That’s the same sentiment that had driven Michael to London in the first place. He hadn’t immediately thrown in his bit with the first supernatural creature he’d seen, of course.

_ “We will be moving next week.” _ The Distortion cuts in, still sounding positively delighted, the undercurrent in their voice a purring rumble. 

“Not sure where, yet, so.” At least, Michael has no idea yet. The Distortion hasn’t bothered to tell him where they’ve been planning to set up the new flat. “Guess we should probably meet again after work and figure that out.”

_ Smooth. _ The Distortion drawls at him, privately. _ Like sandpaper. _

* * *

(That night, after Michael’s gone to bed, the Distortion creeps back out to the horrible, bland little even legged table and shifts themself through space up onto the tabletop. They flip open the laptop and fiddle a bit with it to pull up their secret folder where they keep their research.

It ought to be difficult for a spiral creature such as themself to type and maintain such a document, and that’s why it is so, so easy to click their sharpened fingers across the keys and open up the one appropriately labeled  _ care and feeding of host _ .

They consider their list. They’re doing fairly well for themself, and for Michael, they think.

They chuckle to themself as they add a little  _ x _ next to  _ proper socialization _ , and then another by  _ housed with appropriate fellow human. _

There are other things, of course, to work on. But that’s for later-now-before. They shut the laptop and go trotting back to bed.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy thursday everybody! i was going to upload this earlier this week but then decided i'd save it for today considering that mag177 dropped this morning. 
> 
> next chapter we will be back at it again in 2014 with sasha! we've got a work trip to plan for, and that's gonna call for some team building...
> 
> chapter title isn't from a song this week! technically speaking its a phrase i remember from phineas and ferb so fdshfhsdfh.


	7. and then accelerate it // sasha mid 2014

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha's cautiously optimistic about things in the Archives. Hopefully whatever Jon's about to announce doesn't throw a wrench in that.
> 
> Or: planning, team building, and escorting your friend home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick note: there is a section of this chapter where the archives team goes out for drinks- it's not very long or descriptive but it does mention drinking while on meds (nothing bad just being aware of it) which i felt like i should mention!

It’s a fairly quiet morning in the Archives, all things considered. Jon’s shut himself up in his office, citing a need for quiet (although no one is really being very loud today), Tim’s spend most of the morning upstairs retrieving new intake for archiving, Martin had made everyone a round of tea about thirty minutes ago, and Sasha has the half finished notes she’s transcribing and editing together on the laptop screen in front of her.

A slight sound of paper rustling draws her attention away from her notes to glance down at the open lower bottom drawer of her desk. It’s halfway open, and while a quick look over at her from any of her coworkers wouldn’t reveal anything, she’s got enough experience to pick out the faint mirage lines and refracted edges of the Distortion’s clear camouflage. 

They’d come over about an hour ago and nested in the drawer. Probably bored of whatever Michael’s been doing, not that Sasha minds. It’s not the first time they’ve done it, and isn’t likely to be the last. It’s a little reassuring, honestly, to be able to lightly press her ankle up against the drawer when she comes across something particularly spooky and know that they’re there.

(They’d also been bringing her gummy worms like a cat dragging in a mouse, but those she’d passed off to Tim.)

The Head Archivist’s door suddenly clicks open, and everyone’s attention goes immediately to Jon as he emerges. Sasha feels a sudden lack of something near her feet and quietly kicks the drawer closed; the Distortion must’ve retreated back to Michael as soon as Jon came in.

Jon sighs as he enters the bullpen, coming a bit past Michael’s desk before he stops. "Elias has ordered us onto a work trip."

There's silence following his announcement, before everyone suddenly started talking at once. 

"Did he finally get tired of us-"

"What  _ kind _ of work trip"

"Wait, seriously-"

Jon raises a hand. "I'll explain the rest if you let me."

There’s a bit of minor protesting, but they quiet down all the same. Sasha glances past Jon to see Michael is watching him with a glinting, curious intent. 

“Apparently, there’s some follow-up and supplemental type work that he would like us to do for a case that’s already gone through Storage  _ and _ Research’s teams with little available. So, we’ll all be heading to Manchester for a week.” The unsaid  _ because Elias said so and lives to make my life difficult _ goes understood by his facial expression.

“Hmm.” Michael looks over to Sasha and grins. “Well, last time I agreed to go on a work trip, I almost got hypothermia. So this can’t be worse. Manchester’s warmer than Russia, anyway”

Sasha rolls her eyes at him, but inwardly she knows she’s going to either be pulling him out for lunch, or catching him after work and asking him if he’s alright with going anywhere. 

“So we’re all going…?” Martin pipes up.

“Apparently.” Jon doesn’t sound particularly enthused about it, but then, Sasha remembers what he’d been like about outings back in Research, too. 

“Well, I for one think it’ll be fun.” Tim grins. “Been a while since I got to cost the great Institute more than my salary.”

* * *

“Are you actually not worried about this?” Sasha asks him after work. They’re walking the distance from the Institute to the station Sasha uses to get home. Michael usually walks home, and if he gets bored of that, he can just get from point a to b with a door, and so doesn’t mind walking with her in the opposite direction of his own flat.

Michael hums, and then shrugs. “I mean, I highly doubt there’ll be any rituals involved. And far as I can tell, our Archivist isn’t… well, very Archivist-y.” 

“Because of the statement theft, I assume.” Sasha says. “You two need to be a  _ bit _ more subtle about that; I’m not sure how many times Jon will take ‘I’ve never seen what you’re talking about in my life’ as an answer.”

“Hmm, well.” Michael grins. “I’m sure we can come up with something.”

“Alright, Mr. Throat of Delusion.” Sasha snorts, lightly punching him in the shoulder. 

“I think it’d probably be too early to tell, anyway.” Michael hums. “I’ve heard that most people have more of a trial period before they start showing any real signs. There’s exceptions, of course, but… He seems pretty normal to us.”

“Well, that’s good.” Sasha smiles. “Sort of the goal, yeah?”

“Goal is keeping you three out of trouble. Preventing another Archivist in the meantime is a fun afterthought.” Michael shrugs. 

They separate not too long after, Sasha deep in thought about that last thing Michael had said. She knows that his priority has always been keeping assistants alive, but she does hope that he and Jon can, if not be friendly, be alright with each other. But that’s going to take time, and probably more team building than whatever Elias has planned for them.

* * *

Sasha remembers the  _ other _ thing she’d wanted to ask about the next morning, and catches Michael in the break-room during a snack run. 

Checking that everyone else is still back in the bullpen (or in Jon’s case, sequestered once more in his office), she leans up by the fridge and watches Michael rip open a crisps bag. “Should we be concerned about the worms, I don’t know, trying to get in while we’re all away?”

“Actually, I wouldn't be  _ too _ worried about it.” Michael pauses in pouring the bag into a bowl. “I happen to know from a reliable source that CO2 kills them easy as anything. We just need to spray them and we’ll be fine. Even brought one of the extinguishers up from the flat; bit of a novel experience not using them on cursed ashes. Plus, there’s always just turning them gummy.”

“And you’re both  _ sure _ we don’t need to worry about it?” Sasha asks. She trusts Michael’s judgment, and the Distortions, and Gerry’s really since she’s sure they’d all three talked about the current worm threat as part of whatever talk they’d had about Michael going, but… 

“Sasha, I promise, it’ll be fine. It’s just one hive.” Michael gives her a reassuring grin, and she can feel the prickly attention of the Distortion on her. “It’s irritating, sure; but nothing we can’t handle. Not like we’ve got the Lightless Flame or the Divine Host camping on the front steps. Now  _ those _ would be a problem.”

Sasha raises an eyebrow, but Michael waves it off. "Besides, I asked someone to deal with it while we're gone."

“Someone being…?” Sasha asks, raising an eyebrow.

Michael grins. “That’s a secret. Isn’t Crew, though; you know he lives up north. Planning to bunk down with him while we’re there, actually. Point is, by the time we’re back from whatever Bouchard wants us to do, we shouldn’t have a worm problem anymore.”

“If you’re sure.” Sasha says.

“I’m sure.” Michael nods. Sasha gets the impression the Distortion would be nodding along too, if they weren’t invisible.

“Well, alright.” 

* * *

It’s something of a minor miracle that they’d actually gotten  _ everyone  _ to agree to go out for after work drinks tonight. It was something Tim and Sasha had been doing for years now, and had roped Martin into not long after he joined Research. Getting Jon to join was like wrangling a cat  _ before _ the promotion, and Sasha’s not sure she’s ever seen Michael willingly meet anyone from the Institute besides herself outside of it.

But somehow, here they are, crammed into a booth and starting up tentative conversation threads that are getting a little bolder and steadier as the post-work energy starts to ease.

(It had been Tim’s suggestion, tonight, and specifically because they’d realized that they were all about to be stuck together in relatively close quarters for a week and that not everyone really knew each other in  _ any _ way outside of the Institute.)

“Okay, okay, actual question.” Martin gives Michael a serious look. “Is  _ anyone _ who works down here straight?”

Michael laughs, shaking his head before giving Martin a grin. “I’d rather hoped the pins on my bag would make that one obvious. There’ve been in the past, sure, but I’m definitely not.”

“I feel like it possibly constitutes some sort of HR complaint if Elias shoved us all down into the basement, right?” Tim says. “Like, if we’re all not straight, and we’re  _ all _ in the basement.”

“Better than a closet in Storage.” Sasha grins at him and gets a cuff on the shoulder for her trouble.

The conversation mostly branches off after that, with threads going back and forth and intertwining, until Michael says something to Martin that catches Jon’s attention.

“ _ You _ have a restraining order from someone?” Jon looks somehow both baffled and very suspicious.

“Alright, alright. So  _ maybe _ one of the donors doesn’t really like me.” Michael rolls his eyes. “It’s not really that serious. Not like he ever comes  _ in _ to the Institute anyway.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Sasha shakes her head. “I know I’d have heard about this before now.”

“No, really, I do- look, it’s framed and I have it in my desk. Somewhere.” Michael frowns. “Probably. Or maybe I took it home…?”

“Okay, okay, okay," Tim interrupts, raising his glass, "in the spirit of whatever that was, say the weirdest thing about you that no one would believe but is true." 

"I listen to radio dramas." Jon says.

"It's supposed to be unbelievable, Jon, you dumbass." Tim makes a put-upon sigh, and points at Michael. “You, tall dandelion puff man. Go.”

Michael chugs his glass and sets it down with a heavy sound. "My windbreaker is an alien fear creature." 

There is a tremendous  _ thump _ as Michael immediately passes out onto the table.

Sasha stares at him for a second, panic at what he’s just said warring with the panic of  _ did he just break his nose _ . 

“None of you are fun,” Tim declares, after eyeing Michael for a second. “None of you!”

* * *

It's a really good thing Gerard Keay had no idea what a decent sleep schedule looks like, or Sasha would be dealing with a hungover Michael and a jittery Distortion in the morning, and as much as she loves them both, that isn't something she's interested in. She can’t even begin to imagine what kind of mess the Distortion could make of her flat with Michael out of it like this.

Gerry picks up after the second ring. "Everything okay?" It’s sweet how worried he gets, Sasha thinks.

"Come get your flatmate- I don't think the Distortion is going to be able to navigate the stairs." Sasha says, before she hangs up.

The Distortion is blinking at her from the passenger's seat- she knows it's them, because Michael is still blacked out and they're swirling their irises at her.  _ "The inside... is the outside now..." _ They inform her, voice echoing unnaturally in the confines of Tim's car. It’s weird hearing their voice coming from Michael’s body, even though their voice is just a play off of his.

(Sasha had borrowed the car, seeing as Tim certainly wouldn't be using it tonight. She trusted Jon to get the three of them home in one piece.)

"Great, Tortie." She deadpans, shaking her head. No, they  _ definitely _ wouldn’t be able to navigate stairs; except, maybe for their own. But that brought a whole host of other questions about how safe it was to let the Distortion fiddle with their own being while getting bleed-over drunk from Michael.

A minute later, the lights inside the bookshop flick on, and Gerry emerges wrapped up in his coat. It’s only on over his shoulders, and for a second Sasha has the absurd image of Gerry in a robe come to collect Michael like a disgruntled shut-in flatmate.

Sasha unlocks the car as he comes up to the door and Gerry opens it. “Hey, Sasha. Drinks went well then?”

“Make sure to keep an eye on him; I know he takes anxiety meds, and I don’t know if he’s drunk enough to cause a problem.” Sasha reaches around to hit the belt release on the passenger side so that Gerry doesn’t have to. “And yeah, I think they went pretty well.”

“Mm, I don’t think so. Usually he just loses sleep.” Gerry swings one of Michael’s arms up over his shoulder, leaning in. It doesn’t really look like sleep will be an issue, at this point. “But I’ll watch.”

The Distortion blinks at him.  _ “When did you get here.” _

“Other way around, big guy.” Gerry shakes his head. “You got here.”

_ “Fascinating.” _ They intone, and Sasha snorts because they sound like they lifted it straight off  _ Jon _ . 

“Night, Tortie.” Sasha calls after them as Gerry starts leading them back to the shop’s door.

* * *

Sasha glances around her flat one last time before she leaves. She has her bags ready, she knows everything is tidy and anything that would’ve gone off while she was gone has been disposed of, and her neighbors know she’s going to be away for a week on business.

She texts Tim to let him know she’s headed down and locks the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another late chapter, sorry everyone! as soon as i got out of my depressive episode, someone died! so that was very epic and cool and means i've spent the last two weeks juggling various family stuff. :p and planning for the work trip which thanks to a v helpful friend who lets me rant at them for like 30 minutes about "idk where to go with this", is now p much sorted out! highlighted discord status for working on this chapter is "not drowning? THATS your limit for this trip?"
> 
> i've also added a tentative chapter count based on my current wip documents! it could increase or decrease as we go based on how i end up slicing chapters out or adding/cutting scenes.
> 
> next chapter: one last trip back in time before we head north for the work trip! ;) finally gonna hit our last POV for this fic. and finally get a hint on who michael's other friend is...
> 
> chapter title this week is from "hypocritical" by waters!


	8. bottle of dreams // gerry; mid 2012

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gerry's pleasantly surprised by his new living situation, actually. The company really isn't that bad. 
> 
> Or: that new building down the road that isn't actually new, crisp warping, and DIY cancer treatment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for brief descriptions of a tumor in the last section of this chapter! and for the distortion doing non-invasive surgery in regards to it. it's not overly graphic but i felt like i should mention it.

Gerry stares up at the building in front of him. It’s a sliver of a thing, in between two other similarly sized (small) ones, on a street tucked into a quieter part of London. It’s two stories, and the bottom contains a shopfront with chalk paint in cheerful patterns and a rainbow-striped awning and a door with a bell. He can assume that the upper level is a flat.

It’s the sort of place he’d always sort-of dreamed of, in the distant sort of way he dreamed of living past the age of twenty-five (the first of his assumed “something or someone or some _book_ will have got me by then” ages). When he didn’t have anything better to think about when he got soppy and drunk, he liked to think about how if he could, he’d open his own _totally_ normal bookshop, with his own flat, his own rules, and rip every shred of his mother’s memory from anything it clung to. Make his childhood his own, and all that.

He realizes that’s probably what inspired the Distortion to build this place the way they had, after they had politely informed him that they would be moving in together. Now _that_ had been one of those real “this may as well happen” moments. Probably some sort of a peace offering built out of the conversations they’d had _after_ that initial moment.

It probably should’ve been creepier and a lot scarier than it was, but it was pretty hard to think of the creature attached to Michael Shelley as intimidating. At least, to Gerry, anyway. 

(Partially not when the creature in question looked like an arcade carpet half the time and draped themself over Michael like a garish scarf. Sure, most people would probably be put off by the proportions, or the fuzzy-constantly-blurring edges, but Gerry’s seen all manner of manifestations and Leitners. The Distortion isn’t that intimidating.)

So he knows it wasn’t here yesterday, not in the way everything else on the street was. 

He also knows that if he was to stop one of the locals and ask about the history of the place, they would say the building has been here for years. They’d have stories of the previous owners and their previous stores, of neighborhood luncheons and parties and likely even anecdotes about the first owners of builders, just like any other building. There’d be a recollection of the time the roof got too much water damage and caved in a bit, and the neighbors had gathered around to help move things out of the way.

But all that’s just the Spiral, the Distortion’s way of making things seem like they’ve always been there, usually as a trap to lure in prey. Now, it’s been put to use making a safe place for Gerry and the Distortion’s host to live. 

If someone told him a few years ago that he would’ve accepted rooming with a manifestation of one of the fear entities, he wouldn’t have believed it. But Michael is nice, and seems to like him, and the Distortion seems primarily motivated by keeping Michael happy and safe. So long as Gerry doesn’t do anything stupid to hurt him or threaten him, he doesn’t figure the Distortion is a threat. 

The brickwork doesn’t look entirely normal, joints matching and mismatching and the color seeming to shift hues each time he looks, but isn’t as headache inducing as the other other things the Distortion likes to swathe their creations in. If anything, he thinks this may be more of a warning than an aesthetic choice: a _keep away_ to any Avatars or other manifestations who may happen across their street.

“Well, not gonna get any younger standing out here.” Gerry sighs, and shifts his grip on his duffel. He doesn’t really have _that_ many worldly possessions, what with the nomadic lifestyle of a Leitner hunter and the general disregard for anything he owned before the age of fifteen. 

Hopefully the Distortion has thought of making furniture. Actually, Michael probably has some of his own, since he knows Michael’s been living in his own flat since he graduated secondary and moved to London. Although… he probably would only have the furniture for one person. 

He _really_ hopes the Distortion thought to furnish wherever he’s staying.

He pauses for a moment on the stoop, glancing up at the top of the wooden door frame. There’s a mark curling in the wood: a spiral, of course. It’s even less subtle as a keep-away warning than the brickwork.

He’s surprised to find that there are two other faint marks flanking it on either side, each carved into the wood like a subtle suggestion, but present enough that anyone who knew to check for marks or was touched by an entity would notice passing under them. 

On the left of the coiling spiral, there’s a cloud with a lightning bolt slashed across it. It’s easy enough to pick out as a Vast mark; no other Entity deals in clouds like the Vast does, or thunderstorms. 

On the right, sits a tree with knotted roots that form most of the mark. That one is more unusual- it isn’t like anything Gerry’s ever actually _seen_. The impression it gives, though, is absolutely clear.

The hell have Michael and the Distortion been doing that they've found an End Avatar who’s left a protective mark on their door? Where’d they even _found_ one at all? 

Gerry has only seen Leitners imbued by the End, never an Avatar. They’re as rare and few between as- well, not as anything. It’s the most passive of the entities, even harder to spot than the Web: if not for effort on the End’s part, then for the scarcity of them. 

He decides this is a mystery for another day.

The door opens with a cheerful tinkle of the bell that’s hanging behind it, and he locks the door behind him. 

The front room of the bookshop is everything that the one in which Gerry spent his childhood was not: which is to say, it’s warm, and bright, and there are odd collections of flowers in even stranger vases on the counter and what spines there are facing out from half assembled shelves are bright and all written in modern fonts. 

It honestly looks like the Distortion got halfway through designing a shop and promptly got bored and instead turned their attention to the woodworking. Which, to be fair, does look nice and the deep color of the grain keeps the patterns in it from giving him an immediate migraine. He idly wonders if the Distortion likes watching home and garden as much as Michael says they like the nature channel.

He can hear faint music from up the flight of stairs leading up to a landing and another door, and the noises of someone pushing something around. Giving the shop one last glance over, he heads up the stairs, impressed that none of the steps squeal. They are absolutely rife with swirls in the wood grain, though, and the baseboard may be rippling slightly. The door that’s half propped open by a small cardboard box is a pale yellow.

Michael is in what must be the living area, shoving a table across a rug. On the couch nearby, the Distortion is apparently napping in their “going out” shape of a windbreaker. There’s a rickety looking table shoved into the other corner of the room with a couple of chairs, and he can see at least three doorways leading elsewhere into the flat. One is open and he can’t see any hinges in the frame, so he assumes that’s the kitchen. 

One of the doors is the same pale yellow as the door into the flat, and the other is a charcoal gray. Gerry assumes that’s the Distortion’s way of color coding the bedrooms. The second pale yellow door, on the same wall as the grey one, is too close to the entryway Gerry’s just come through to be anything other than the bathroom. Unless the Distortion has thrown all engineering rules out of the window, which is always possible, but probably more passive effort than the rippling woodwork on the stairs.

Michael doesn’t seem to have noticed him yet, concentrating on getting the table where he wants it to be. His phone is sitting by the Distortion on the couch, the source of the music. 

Huh. He hadn’t taken Michael for an alt rock kind of guy.

Michael seems fairly tied up in relocating the table to wherever it is he wants it- which Gerry personally can’t figure out, because he thinks it looks fine already- so he just heads past to the charcoal door and is pleasantly surprised to find that yes, the Distortion had thought of furniture for him.

It takes Michael about five minutes after Gerry returns to the main room to realize that someone else is standing next to him, and he nearly jumps when he catches Gerry out of the corner of his eyes. “Oh! I didn’t see you come in- _Distortion_.”

The Distortion in question makes a chiming noise.

“Were you just not going to tell me Gerry was here?” Michael demands, glaring at them.

 _“He seemed to be finding his way around just fine.”_ The Distortion answers. _“Even knew which door was right. Perhaps I made that one too easy.”_

* * *

There’s a bottle of hand soap in the kitchen that’s labeled with “lemon verbena”, which Gerry suddenly realizes is the slightly floral smell Michael’s always carrying around with him. He’d thought maybe it was the Distortion doing that. After all, floral isn’t really the sort of thing you’d expect from a creature of madness.

Gerry decides he’s not going to get started on the loop of deciphering if it was the Distortion or Michael that first liked the scent and why, and just pulls a drink from the fridge and goes to join his flatmate at their little dining table, which is a fancy way to describe the thing shoved into corner of the main room.

The Distortion’s hauled themself up onto a shelf hanging over it, and is watching Michael like some sort of arcade-esque gargoyle as he works through a bag of crisps. Gerry looks to the little odds and ends sitting next to them on the shelf, and hums contemplatively as he sits. There’s a Polaroid picture of Michael and another man- boy, really, because it can’t have been taken any later than when Michael was in secondary- and it reminds Gerry of a question he’d meant to ask before.

"So how old are you, actually?" Gerry glances at Michael for a moment, popping open his drink. "I don't think you've actually said."

Michael blinks, and then grins. "Eight!"

Gerry looks up at him again, frowning. "Excuse me?"

Michael gives him a serious look for a minute before he starts laughing, and sighs through his nose. "Ah- sorry, I just think that's funny to tell people. I'm twenty-nine." 

The Distortion rumbles from their perch on the shelf. " _I am ageless."_

“You’re however old I say you are, and today, you get to be about three hundred.” Michael points a crisp at them, and then huffs when he pulls his hand back and the crisp’s gone all lopsided and half drooped. “Never mind, I’m gonna go with three _._ You are _three_.”

Michael still stuffs it into his mouth, anyway, and Gerry snorts and shakes his head before he asks, "And the eight thing?" 

"That's when the deed poll went through." Michael shoves another handful of crisps into his mouth, before tossing one to the Distortion, who bats at it before making a godawful crunching noise. “Ah- Sarah signed it with me, I’ve got a copy of it… somewhere. Ought to frame it, really.”

“Huh. Just realized you’re only about a year older than I am.” Gerry hums. “Who’s Sarah?”

“Sarah was…” Michael goes quiet, studying the labeling of the crisps bag. “She was my friend.” 

The Distortion hops off the counter, and wriggles their way into Michael’s lap, leaning into his stomach with a concerned noise. 

“I don’t- I don’t even know what _happened_ to her… I just- I got back and she was _gone_.” Michael says, nearly inaudible. “Gertrude wouldn’t tell me, I couldn’t find any records… she was just. Gone.”

“Michael, I’m sorry.” Gerry hesitates before he reaches across the table, offering his hand palm up. “We could try looking together? Or I could look around, and then if you want to know, I could tell you…” 

After a minute, Michael lets the crisps bag drop, and takes Gerry’s hand in one of his. He isn’t looking up at him, but he can see his ears are tinged pink and there’s the hint of a smile playing at his lips. “Thanks.”

* * *

The Distortion corners him downstairs one morning the week after he moves in. It’s less frightening than it should be, considering they’re sitting on one of the still half assembled shelves and fuchsia. Or cyan?

Gerry decides to cut the difference and call it CMYK. After a few minutes of near quiet (the Distortion is humming, or chuckling to themself, or both) he figures now is as good a time as any to ask them about the stoop, seeing as they’re only a few yards from it. “So how’d _you_ meet an End Avatar, anyway?”

 _“We haven’t met them.”_ The Distortion answers, and then amends, _“Yet. Or, we have-will-are meeting them.”_

Gerry gives them a look, raising one eyebrow. “And the other one?

 _“Has been around. Will be, too.”_ The Distortion chimes, letting one long and stretched out arm reach out to pluck a book from the box Gerry had been looking at it. They put it down again with a disinterested noise. Funny, seeing as the Distortion was the one that had decided to bring all of the books here or make them, or whatever the Distortion did to begin stock. He has the strangest image of the Distortion huddled over an old fashioned printing press with little glasses floating just off the impression of their face. _“Had a Leitner once, doesn’t now. You understand.”_

“I understood about two percent of that.” Gerry informs them, tearing open another box.

The Distortion brightens. _“Excellent.”_

* * *

So, living with a manifestation of the Spiral and the man that they’re attached to has been… actually, it’s been better than Gerry had anticipated. Honestly, it’s been better than his living situation has for years, even better in some ways because Michael doesn’t ask many questions about what Gerry actually does when he’s at the Institute inconveniencing the Eye’s chosen, and doesn’t seem to mind the whole “bringing home Leitner's to burn” thing either. Not even the possibility of being followed home by most things is a concern, really, not with the Distortion present and the marks over the door.

But there is _one_ minor detail of his prior life that he isn’t sure how to explain, and he’s starting to feel it itching at him again, the need to deal with it. He’d originally planned to go to Gertrude about it, but that’s obviously out now.

He thinks on it while he lays stretched out on the couch with a heating pad Michael offered him on his shoulders. 

“I have a ghost problem.” Gerry finally says.

The clicking of keys pauses, and he looks over to see that Michael is watching him from the chair in the corner, hands resting on the keyboard in his lap. “Hmm?” He’s got his head canted to the side a little past what’s likely healthy, for a person without the Distortion living with them.

The Distortion in question is laying half-between and half-on Michael’s legs, stretched out like a cat. He can just make out the rough shape of an impression of a face and eyes against the backdrop of Michael’s sticker covered laptop.

“You mean like, a regular ol’ spooky ghost from a travel show or like, a definitely cursed maybe-a-Leitner-or-manifestation ghost?” Michael asks, tilting his head the other way. “Because the first thing, I think we can handle, but I may need to call someone for the second.”

 _“I’m not sure if anyone else could handle it.”_ The Distortion chimes in now, sounding delighted at the prospect of fighting off some manifestation. It probably _would_ be something they’d enjoy, all things considered. A way to show off and make an even stronger case for why Gerry should trust them- and Michael. _“I think we can handle it.”_

“You sure about that?” Michael reaches around the laptop to scratch at the Distortion’s flickering ears. “I seem to remember you being a little nervous about things coming by.”

 _“Not_ now. _Anything that gets in here may as well be half in the threshold of the halls for the good it’ll do any invaders.”_ The Distortion preens. _“I am very good at designing places_.”

“Honestly, I’m not certain how to fix it, but you’re welcome to have at it.” Gerry doesn’t shrug- he doesn’t want to move the heating pad. 

_“I am It Is Not What It Is.”_ The Distortion reminds him, and Gerry doesn’t need to see their stretched grin to know that they are grinning. 

* * *

Gerry’s sitting on the little couch one day when he’s startled out of his research by the sounds of an argument and the wild clatter of too-long sharp-edged claws on the floor. He’d say that it takes a second for his heart rate to recover and for his brain to stop screaming _threat_ , except he doesn’t have time for that before the Distortion is suddenly on him.

“Dis- get _off_ him!” Michael comes skidding in after them, face red. “We’ve talked about this! I _told_ you, no more impromptu su-”

There’s a sudden, piercing _something_ in the side of Gerry’s head. It’s not painful, but it’s wrong, and feels a bit like a concentrated migraine.

And suddenly, it’s gone.

 _“Whoops.”_ The Distortion chimes, hopping down onto the floor. They’re hobbling on their back pair of legs and left arm for a moment, before they’re skittering away on two parts and a spare. In their right arm, they’re carrying-

Well. It looks like a little wet, bloody lump of flesh.

Which is super reassuring and all, considering Gerry now realizes that whatever the hell it is, the Distortion had just pulled it _out of his head_.

“Whoops.” Gerry repeats, dragging his gaze up from the mangled red and pink pulp in the Distortion’s long knife-blade fingers to Michael’s face. He still looks mortified, but the anger seems to have gone, and he’s staring at the Distortion. 

“They, ah, they just.” Michael’s hauled the Distortion up into the air now by what’s probably close enough to be called it’s scruff, which is a bit disarming as the Distortion has shifted to at least a third larger than Michael is. They’ve raised their fingers up in defense, waving the gross pulp about in his face. “They’ll decide something is a bad growth, like the Corruption, and then just. Yank it out. Usually without telling.”

 _“You didn’t mind when I did it to you.”_ The Distortion grumbles, and when Michael doesn’t seem to give the reaction they want to the blob in his face, they do _something_ alarming with their jaw and it disappears down the Distortion’s throat.

“That was disgusting.” Gerry says. “Like, _properly_ disgusting, and I’ve seen an actual Corruption Leitner before.”

Michael shrieks and drops the Distortion like they’ve burned him. “Oh my god, please tell me you _didn’t_ do that last time.”

The Distortion, which of course was never half falling to the ground and was always perched at the corner table and looking at them with their neck twisted around and over the slope of their multiple shoulders, giggles. _“I won’t tell you.”_

Michael groans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright gang, we have MADE it! this was the last chapter before the awaited work trip! as soon as this goes up i'll be marking this as a series because the first alt pov/extra scene is for the next chapter c; i'm also going to be adding a couple of tags 
> 
> next chapter: we'll be boarding our train north, having a little bit of fun after disembarking, and then we have a mysterious statement to start investigating now, don't we? 
> 
> chapter title this week from "Melatonin" by Birds of Bellwoods!


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